Runners

by Ann Kelley

  ‘Did you get my wellies, Sid?’

  ‘Yeah, found them. How’s your feet?’

  She said listlessly, ‘I’m hungry.’

  They feasted on cheese substitute and water biscuits on a cabbage-leaf plate. Lo wouldn’t eat anything green. But she gave hers to the pale blue knitted rabbit, which she clutched as if it would hop away if she put it down. It had one black stitched eye, a small black mouth and a pair of floppy pink ears. It looked sad. ‘Don’t you like gweens?’ she asked it. ‘Lo don’t like gweens, too.’

  Sid tore off a piece of cabbage and chewed it until all the juice had gone then spat it out. They tried to bite into the raw potatoes but they were too hard and tasted awful. So he juggled them instead and made her laugh. It was a long time since they had laughed. He remembered making potato prints at his first school, carving a shape on the cut surface and dipping it in paint.

  He pretended to take a potato from Lo’s ear. She giggled. When he was seven, he had taught himself magic tricks, because Isambard Kingdom Brunel had performed them for his three children. He imagined the famous man chain-smoking cigars while producing rabbits from his tall black hat. He knew everything there was to know about IKB. Brunel smoked forty cigars a day and died aged fifty-three. Amazing he’d lasted that long, thought Sid. Sometimes he’d thought he’d like to be a magician as well as an engineer. Not much hope of doing either of those things now, he thought, bitterly.

  ‘Thank you for my wabbit, Sid.’ Lo lifted her dirty face to her big brother’s and kissed his cheek. He smiled and touched her face.

  At the swimming pool, as Lo called it, they washed, and Sid swilled out his mouth in a vain attempt to clean his mossy teeth.

  ‘Boat ride, boat ride, boat ride,’ she chanted.

  ‘Shh, all right. But you’ve got to be quiet. Pretend you can’t talk. It’s like a game, we’re both dumb.’

  ‘Dumb?’

  ‘Can’t talk.’

  She put her hands over her mouth to stop herself talking, and giggled. Invisible birds chirruped and whistled from the trees. Fish rose and kissed the surface of the water and insects with rainbow-coloured wings hovered in the warm air. A breeze whispered in the reeds.

  ‘Don’t do that, stupid. You need both hands to get into the boat, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m not stupid, and you’re a pooey-face.’ She frowned at him but did as she was asked and tucked the hem of her fairyprincessdress into her frilly pants to keep it from getting wet. They drifted across the lake, sun flickering through the overhanging trees on their upturned faces.

  After he had filled up the containers they trudged back to the den. Lo had wanted to stay by the pool all day, but Sid felt uneasy there. If anyone saw them they wouldn’t be able to escape. They would be like flightless ducks. They would be caught and Lo would be taken away.

  ‘Our roundabout den’s best. It’s safe there. Our secret place.’

  ‘Yeah, secret place.’ Lo sucked her thumb and tripped over her boots. ‘My feet hurt.’ She sat and pulled at her wellies.

  ‘You’ll have to carry them, I’m not.’ Sid was sweating from carrying the water.

  ‘Don’t care.’ But she soon got a splinter in her foot and yelled out.

  He put down the containers. ‘Shh, don’t make so much noise, Lo.’ He couldn’t get at it with his dirty, bitten-down nails. His mam would have used a needle cleaned in a flame to dig out a splinter. There were so many things you needed to know to look after a small child. He sighed. ‘Put yer boots back on, Lo, it won’t hurt so much.’

  Inevitably he ended up carrying her on his back, the bag over his shoulder, the water sloshing over the side of the bucket. She kept up a low whimper all the way back. The occasional rumble of a heavy vehicle reached them, but they saw no one.

  The cat had made a shallow nest in the leafy bed of the den. Her time was near, and she had decided this was the safest place, but she slunk away at the sound of the children returning and waited until they slept before sneaking back.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE BIKERS CAME again that night. Twenty of them. They came from the direction of Hayle, roared and raced around the roundabout, then disappeared along the A-road to the next town. Except for one. The last rider. He was leaning over too far, his Harley Davidson skidded and spun away from him and he rolled over and over and landed in the middle of brambles on the roundabout.

  Sid woke. He heard the rest of the riders as they carried on with their journey, unaware of what had happened. He listened to the silence that followed.

  He crept to the edge of the roundabout and looked at the crashed bike. No rider to be seen. He must be on the other side of the bike, he thought. There was no other traffic; no army trucks, no tanks. He ran out to the mangled Harley. No one there. Where was the rider? He looked about the road, but couldn’t see a body. The man must have got up and walked away.

  They went to the lake again. Sid found another way to it, well away from the mushroom field. It was a longer journey, but he didn’t want to bump into any foragers. They swam and bathed and rowed.

  ‘Mammy would like it here,’ Lo said. ‘Show me the photo.’ She stared at the stained paper. ‘Is that her?’

  ‘Yeah, course it is, stupid.’

  ‘I’m not stupid and you’re a pooey-face. Where’s Dad’s wheelie-chair?’

  ‘It’s a photo of their wedding day, isn’t it? Before the accident. When Dad had legs to stand on.’

  ‘I like him in his wheelie chair,’ she whispered.

  They trekked back through the wood, and Sid picked up the spade and rope from the derelict building. They listened at the road and crossed to the roundabout.

  ‘What’s that funny noise, Sid?’

  ‘Shh!’ They stood still and listened.

  A moan. Not the moan of wind blowing through the tunnel. Another sort of moan.

  It was difficult dragging the injured man out of the brambles. He was heavy, big. Sid was scared of injuring him more. The biker’s leathers were torn and bloody, his helmet still strapped under his chin, the visor hiding his face, an angel design on the helmet, a white angel, and on the back of his black jacket was the design of white wings.

  ‘Is it an angel? Did he fall out the sky?’

  ‘Shh, he’s hurt bad. Gimme the water.’

  ‘Will he eat all our food? Will he help us find Mammy and Dadda? Will he fly away when he’s better? Is he dead?

  The next day an army truck came and two TA soldiers removed the wrecked motorbike.

  ‘Fancy walking away from that! Lucky bugger, eh!’

  A bulky, broad, strong man. Big hands. White lines splayed out from grey eyes. A tattooed angel on his bald head. Hairy nostrils and ears that reminded Sid of Gramps. The grandfather he was hoping to find in the Far West. He and Gramps had looked over a bridge at quivering trout. Before Lo was born. Before everything started to go wrong.

  Sid held his water bottle to the man’s parched lips. He gulped at it, water spilling over his gingery beard and onto his chest.

  ‘You’re injured,’ said Sid. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Call me Mal,’ the man croaked.

  Sid offered his hand as he had seen his father do with strangers. ‘I’m Sid.’

  The man tried to lift his right arm and failed.

  ‘Thanks, Sid. I owe you. Er, was there a pannier?’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A bag attached to the bike?’

  ‘Dunno. The soldiers must have found it.’

  The lie made Sid’s cheeks redden. He had looked inside the pannier, with some guilt. It was private, he shouldn’t have, but somehow privacy and things like that had all disappeared with The Emergency. There might have been food or something they could have used. He had hidden the rifle under a log, far from the den, and made sure that Lo hadn’t seen. There was ammunition too. The first-aid kit was brilliant; he wouldn’t have managed to help the man without it. There were scissors, needles and cotton, a big torch, batteries, rop
e. A huge haul. But no food.

  Lo fed the man a few beans from the tin.

  ‘Are you an angel?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He tried to grin but it hurt. Everything hurt.

  She danced around twirling her tatty skirt.

  ‘An angel, an angel! Do all angels eat beans? Where’s your wings?’

  He tried to get up but could not. He swore.

  ‘That’s a naughty word,’ Lo scolded.

  Sid held his head and got him to sip more water, then laid him down gently. Where his leathers were torn his hip and thigh were exposed and the tattooed words

  Sid was in a terrible quandary. He knew who the man was. He should have killed him, not saved his life. But killing was wrong. He was thinking ahead, of what to do when the man was well enough to walk. He had a plan.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  HE HAD NO MEMORY of the accident or anything that had happened that day. He was perplexed at how he had got here in this tunnel and why these children were caring for him. He vaguely remembered being at the depot and getting into his leathers.

  Every time he closed his eyes the nightmare descended, except that it wasn’t a nightmare, it was true. His first job. He saw her blue eyes as they had dimmed. This little girl looked very like her – same skinny limbs, hollow cheeks, dark smudges under her eyes, messy pale hair. He sank into himself again, pain pushing him into unconsciousness, a place he was keen to stay away from.

  ‘I don’t like the noises he makes,’ Lo complained.

  ‘He’s only dreaming, Lo. A bad dream. About coming off his bike, I expect.’

  ‘It frightens me,’ she hiccupped.

  After Sid cleaned and covered the hip wound with an antiseptic dressing the man had sunk into a deep slumber.

  Sid smeared the biker’s ointment on Lo’s festering blisters and stuck plasters over them, and on the scratches on her arms. She was delighted with them, as proud as if they had been medals. He put a small round plaster on his own sore heel, too.

  ‘I hurt myself bad, didn’t I, Sid? Bad as the angel?’

  With the sewing kit he mended the hole in his baggies. Pricked himself a dozen times but he’d done it. Proud of himself, he was. Wished his mam could have seen him.

  There were no more baked beans or Labmeat and the milk powder was nearly used up. All they had now was water and dried soup powder. Sid had no choice. He would have to leave Lo with the injured man and hunt for more food. Her ‘angel’ was immobile, for the time being, but to make sure, Sid tied him up and blindfolded him. The man was unconscious again, but he wasn’t going to take any chances.

  ‘What yer doing that for, Sid?’ Lo was upset. He took her on his lap and jogged her up and down. She wiped her nose on her arm.

  ‘We don’t want him to know where our secret den is, do we? I won’t be long. Promise. Stay here. Don’t move. You can guard him, eh? Give him water if he wants?’

  She nodded, reluctantly.

  ‘You’ll be okay, yeah? Won’t be long.’

  With the empty backpack flapping on his naked back, Sid jogged through fields he knew from his other sorties, keeping a careful eye open for danger.

  Wild ducks waddled through the meadow, stretching their necks to sip at the seed heads of grasses. It gave him an idea.

  Avoiding the farmer with horse and plough and the bending labourers in the dusty fields, he kept an eye open for the armed guard, and made for the uncut edge of a field of corn. He plucked a ripe yellow head and chomped on it, spitting out the chaff and nibbling the nutty grain. It was good, like raw rice but softer. He found more, but it wasn’t enough to satisfy his hunger. He was always hungry. It was as if a gnawing worm was inside his empty stomach, never letting him be. He couldn’t risk begging food from the labourers. For Lo’s sake, he had to keep his head down. Be invisible.

  He gathered more corn and stuffed it in his pocket. He wore the knife in his belt, like a dagger, dark glasses shaded his eyes; in his imagination he became a desperado, a hunter. Even though he had his ID he avoided people, not wanting to answer awkward questions.

  He thought about the man. He remembered the awful words he’d heard from the girl with the dark eyes. ‘Population Reduction Programme’. Dad should have listened to Mam. They should have left for the Far West, away from the ghetto. But Dad, stubborn as ever, wanted to stay put.

  Big mistake, thought Sid. He wished he hadn’t saved the Reducer’s life. It was going to be a problem, getting rid of him without him knowing the whereabouts of the den. Perhaps they should abandon the roundabout and run?

  ‘Angel, are you going to stay and look after us?’

  ‘Have to get back to work, don’t I?’ The pain from his sore shoulder and damaged hip bothered him; the rope around his wrists and ankles was an irritation and he was desperate for a piss.

  ‘What work do angels do? Looking after people?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Would you like a cuppatea?’

  Lo put a leaf to his mouth and stroked his arm. He flinched.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  AS SID WENT further away from the roundabout, he noticed new planting on the roadside verges. The labels said – runner beans, carrots, blackcurrants. There were fruit bushes covered in black nets. He kept to no-man’s land between the verges and the fields, narrow paths of untouched earth where nettles and thistles grew, butterflies fluttered and birds foraged. Everywhere he looked there was planting going on. Women of about his grandparents’ age bent and dug, threw seed and stamped it in. Two large horses pulled a plough; gulls and crows rose and fell behind it, black and white, black and white. Hosepipes lay along the fields and water trickled and sprinkled onto the furrows. He bent to drink. The sun burnt the faces of the workers. It had already bleached Sid’s light brown hair white. His legs were covered in scratches and gashes, scabs and stings. A bird was singing, he didn’t know what it was, but it made him suddenly glad to be alive. He took a deep breath of salty air.

  He came across an old stone road sign. Marazion (Marghas Yow) five miles. A town with ‘z’ in it. Was this where his grandparents lived? Five miles wasn’t far. He and Lo had walked much further than that, most days on the flight from the city, but he couldn’t go today. Food was uppermost in his mind, that and what to do about the Reducer. He had rehidden the rifle and the ammunition a long way from the den, in a burrow in the earth that could have been made by an animal. He had covered it over with a few dead branches and marked a tree nearby with his knife, so he would find it again. Holding the heavy weapon made him feel like a man. But would he be able to use it if he had to? He didn’t know why he had wanted to save the Reducer. Except that it is what his father would have done, regardless of who the man was.

  The badger, who had given birth to two cubs in the underground chamber a few days before, short-sightedly examined the metal objects at the entrance to her sett, and crept out to find food. She lifted her striped head and sniffed. A pungent smell – Man. She kept well away from the tunnel, waddled across the empty road and dug under a hedge where there was a wasp nest.

  CHAPTER NINE

  MAL COULDN’T GET UP, couldn’t see, bloody kid had blindfolded him too; couldn’t free himself. Hurt all over. He felt the presence of the small girl, smelled her close by, heard her snivelling.

  ‘I wish I had my bag of stuff. I’ve got sweeties in there,’ he said, quietly. There was a brief silence. Then…

  ‘Sweeties! I like sweeties.’

  ‘Untie me, girlie, and I’ll get the sweeties for you.’

  ‘Lo, Lo, what are you doing?’ Sid came through the bushes. I told you to stay in the den.’ Sid looked angry, but Lo was too excited to notice.

  ‘The angel has sweeties in his bag, Sid.’

  ‘But you don’t have a bag, do you? I told you, the soldiers took it with the bike’. Sid spat the words into the man’s face.

  ‘We were going to look for it,’ Lo said.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Sid removed the blindfold and Mal blinked
.

  ‘You’re Runners, aren’t you? Is that what you’re afraid of? That I’ll turn you in?’

  ‘I’m fourteen,’ Sid said, defensively.

  ‘But she’s under eight, isn’t she?’ He nodded at Lo, who had wandered off a little way and was kicking at the dry leaf litter. A sycamore key twirled down from its tree and landed at her feet. She picked it up and threw it into the air and watched happily as it spun as it fell.

  ‘What is she? Four, five? And you’re hiding her. That’s a punishable offence, these days. Makes you a Runner too.’

  Sid remained silent, sorting out the bag of potatoes and greens on the ground.

  ‘But, as I said, I owe you, don’t I? Not going to hurt you.’ He snorted and spat. ‘Potatoes, that’s good. Do you know how to cook them?’

  Sid shook his head.

  ‘Tell you what, kid – I’ll show you how to build an underground fire. That way there’ll be no smoke. Undo these, yeah? Dying for a piss. Can’t do that for me, eh?’ He laughed, a wheezy sound.

  Sid imagined the smell of baked potatoes, could almost taste them.

  He could see no reason not to undo the ropes. No way could the man get away, the state he was in.

  Released from his bonds, went a little way off to relieve himself in the bushes. Sid, picked up the poker, watching him closely. The man took in the situation. The lad wasn’t stupid.

  ‘Right kid, got a spade? Good, then dig a pit.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Listen, you won’t survive unless you eat proper. You want to eat, don’t you?’

  Sid dug a deepish hole in the earth and under the man’s instruction, laid a floor of stones and pebbles. Lo sat nearby, hiccupping and scratching her head. ‘I want sweeties,’ she whispered to herself.