Deadly Encounters

by Wycherley, Jeannie

  “Don’t you like apples?” asked Derek and pulled one off the branch for himself. He opened his mouth and bit deeply into the shiny skin. I drew my breath in sharply. Derek stared at me as he chewed. “It’s good,” he said, his mouth full of creamy flesh.

  I turned the apple over in my hand. I wanted to taste it. How I wanted to.

  I gaped at Derek as he munched noisily. Then I lifted my hand and brought the apple to my lips. It was smooth. I caressed the skin with my tongue, so fresh, and then opened my mouth wide. It took more effort than I remembered. I bit into it, the sweetness exploding in my mouth, the crunch reverberating in my ears. I sucked on the juices, chewed, waited for something bitter to replace the taste sensation, but nothing did and so I swallowed. I finished the apple in thirty seconds flat, and Derek handed me another one with a smile.

  “You must be hungry!” He laughed in delight. I found myself smiling back at him.

  After that, I toured the garden in Derek’s wake. He showed me raspberries and tomatoes, green beans and pots full of herbs. Fascinated by them all, I sniffed them, tasted them, turned my nose up at the sharpness of the raspberries but ate my fill of tiny tomatoes, sweet and red and firm.

  “Who looks after all of this?” I asked the boy.

  Derek considered the question with all of the gravity he possessed, but the question flummoxed him. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe we all do.”

  ***

  Maybe we do.

  We don’t, but maybe we can do, I thought later. I had returned home as the light began to fail, aware of the curfew and tired from all the fresh air. I didn’t understand how the garden had not been discovered by the foragers, and I couldn’t get my head around the fact that such a glorious place existed. Derek had elicited from me a promise that I would return, and I intended to.

  The next day at Gulliver’s, my fingers resumed scrabbling among the muck and scratching in the dust as was customary. As I unfastened bolts and prized joints apart, I detected a sense of urgency and excitement in my movements. For once, I had something to look forward to at the end of the day.

  I had no intention of spilling the secret about the garden. Its mere existence filled me with joy and hope, two emotions I hadn’t experienced at all during the past twenty years. I practically bounced with excitement when Gulliver finally let her workers go. We filtered off in every direction. I walked the two miles back into the city, climbing the mountains of debris—small lumps of concrete skittering in all directions—with a renewed vigour, anxious in case the garden had been a dream and didn’t actually exist at all.

  But there it was, through the green door still bright and shiny, and then through the cupboard door, mundane in the extreme. The sun shone on my face as I moved out of the shadows. It warmed me. Greeting Derek and Bailey, I divested myself of my boots; painfully peeled three layers of socks away from my stinking, wrinkled feet; and stood barefoot on grass for the first time in two decades. Derek stared down in barely concealed disgust at the grey flesh of my feet and my curled yellow toenails. He shot off in the direction of the lake.

  Stems of grass tickled the arches of my feet and wormed their way between my toes. It felt extraordinary. I hadn’t realized how much my feet ached until I experienced the coolness of the earth against my skin. It seemed to draw the pain from my muscles. It was agonizing but sensational at the same time.

  I hobbled after Derek, both afraid and exhilarated as I drew closer to the water. Derek had perched on the edge, sitting on the grass. He patted a rock, and I sat down, awkwardly, next to him.

  “What’s wrong with your feet?”

  “I haven’t bathed them much,” I said, meaning not at all. Not since I’d been a kid.

  “Is the rest of you like that?”

  “No,” I smiled at his temerity. “Not so bad, I think.”

  “You should get in the water.”

  “I can’t swim.”

  “Just put your feet in then. It won’t hurt. I do it all the time. Look.” He slipped his shoes off and jumped into the lake. I watched him, recoiling from the splashing.

  “Why are you so scared?” he asked. The disdain in his voice hurt a little. I didn’t have many friends. Didn’t want them. Derek was just a little boy, but I wanted him to like me. That was dangerous for me. I couldn’t risk becoming emotionally entangled with anyone, even a kid.

  I stood abruptly. “Let’s get some apples,” I shouted and ran for the tree, forgetting the pain in my feet momentarily. I heard Derek laugh and then he ran too, overtaking me with ease. I thundered after him, my breath wheezing in and out of my ruined lungs. I halted at the tree, bent over, coughed and coughed as phlegm worked its way up and out of me—infected and bloody. I hawked into the long grass, trying to avoid Derek seeing. When I had myself under control, I turned back to him. He held out an apple.

  “They say an apple a day keeps the doctor away,” he offered, and I nodded, my eyes prickling with unshed tears. The old sayings. Things my mother would say. I shook the memories away.

  “Where are your parents?” I asked.

  Derek didn’t answer, just chewed on his apple. I bit into mine, enjoyed the tangy, crisp sweetness, glad when it washed away the metallic taste of blood from my mouth.

  “Let’s play on the swings!” demanded Derek and away he ran again, Bailey barking and leaping at him as he went. I plucked another few apples from the tree and followed at a more sedate pace.

  The play area was wild with dog daisies and yellow wort, nodding their heads in the tall grass. Butterflies danced from flower to flower, and bees buzzed lazily among them. I couldn’t recall seeing butterflies and bees for many years, but here they were thriving. A neat path had been mown through the grass, and a pair of swings hung on chains from a tall metal skeleton, freshly painted the same shade of bright green as the front door.

  “Someone does look after this place,” I said, more to myself than to Derek who didn’t seem to care. He had climbed up onto one of the wooden seats and was already pushing himself backwards and forwards.

  “Come on!” he shouted. “Let’s fly!”

  And I did. Tentatively at first. I let my feet do the work, before my stomach muscles—unaccustomed to the action of pushing—instinctively took over. I settled into the rhythm, drawing back and then flowing forwards. Higher I flew, the blood rushing through my veins in exhilaration. Backwards and forwards, to and fro, higher and higher. I soared through the air, free like a bird, and all I saw was the garden … fresh and green and alive all around me. No dust, no dirt, no debris.

  But suddenly it felt alien and wrong. I slammed my bare feet painfully into the ground, slid to a stop and flung myself from the swing. The momentum catapulted me into the long grass where I retched uncontrollably, the apple I’d eaten quickly regurgitated, and then I started dry heaving.

  I felt a small hand on the centre of my back. “Are you okay?” Derek’s concerned voice came from far away.

  How could I tell him of my fears? How afraid, how desperately frightened I felt. Not of the water or the apples or the swings. But because these things didn’t exist in my world I found it easier to live without them than to know of them, to experience them, and to fall in love with them, and have them cruelly taken away. Everything I had loved in my life had been stolen violently away at some stage or another, when I was young. I’d adapted and survived. I didn’t want hope or beauty in my life, only for it to be snatched away again.

  What if somebody else had followed me here? What if someone stumbled across the door? What would The Organization think of this place? What would they do to it? They would turn it into a farm, try to feed everyone. It would become contaminated, and it would fail. It would die. I couldn’t bear it.

  Derek’s hand pressed firmly on my back. I shrugged him off, pushed myself to standing and walked away. Away from the swings, past the maze and the apple trees, past the raspberry bushes, the vine tomatoes and the lake. Dragon flies hovered curiously in front of my face
, keeping a perfect distance, and then zipped off. Derek called to me. I didn’t look back, simply collected my heap of socks and my boots and strolled on.

  Stony faced, I pulled the green door firmly shut. Behind me was sunshine, in front of me, only shadow. I turned for home and walked barefoot among the rubble of a ruined civilization.

  ***

  “You’re pretty sick,” Joanne said to me one evening months later as the sun dropped steadily to the horizon and I wheezed my way up to her sparse stall.

  “I’m all right.”

  We all got sick. Joanne wasn’t immune. She and I were more or less the same age, but if I looked as old and worn out as she did at this relatively young age, I knew my time was limited. I handed over my day’s takings, and she passed me a pile of dried out root vegetables and three tiny green tomatoes, too soft now to ever ripen. I gawped at them, remembered the sweet tomatoes, as red as blood, I’d eaten in the garden.

  “New from the farm. You could probably do with a fair few of these to get some vitamins inside you.” I shrugged. No chance of that. No point in speaking of it. I turned to leave, but Joanne stopped me. “I heard that someone caught a dog or something. They’re cooking it in the square now. Maybe you could get some? Meat would do you good.” She offered me some of my coins back.

  My stomach rolled, and I looked at Joanne in mute shock. It was the kind of news I’d dreaded since I’d discovered the garden. What if the dog in question was Bailey? I wheeled around and stumbled out of the market.

  In order to get home I had to pass right through the square where a small crowd were gathering around a fire pit. I could smell roasting flesh, so held my breath and averted my eyes, not wanting to see the small animal strung up on the spit, being turned slowly as onlookers drooled in anticipation. I walked away rapidly, the vegetables tumbling from my grasp as I went, the tomatoes exploding when they hit the floor.

  What a waste. Such a waste. I felt heartily tired of it. The death, the destruction, the futility of picking out a life in the rubble and the dust. I stepped up the pace to get away from the stink of the dog on the spit, but my lungs burned with the effort of trying to walk through the loose concrete chippings too quickly, and I slowed down in order to prevent a painful coughing fit that would see me leave half a lung in the gutter.

  I drew level with the alley where I had first seen Bailey and reluctantly looked for him. I could see no discernible movement through the twilight gloom. Casting a wary eye around me, I picked my way through the alley, under the overhang, through to the dead end. No sign of the dog. I would have liked to pretend that I had never thought of him, or of Derek, in the intervening months since I’d walked out of the garden, but that would have been a lie. I didn’t dwell on them, because that would be too painful, but I carried them in my memory and in my heart. Something I had never intended to do. Thinking of them, took me home. Back to the past. Back when I had a family. I missed them. I missed them all.

  I paused in front of the door. The bright green paint had faded to grey now, lost under dense layers of dust and filth. I scraped some away with my finger, exposed the colour. Wrote my name, Lucie, considered it my epitaph, and turned the handle. The store room seemed much as it had been before, just a little mustier, the faint scent of detergent masking something old and long forgotten.

  I caught my breath and reached out for the handle of the cupboard door. It felt cold in my grip. What would I see beyond? I feared it would be an extension of the world I had left behind me and not the garden I remembered. I held the door, inching it forward, then let it spring fully open. I was momentarily blinded by bright midday sunshine. It was always daytime here.

  I stepped out onto the grass, the earth spongy beneath my feet and damp with recent rainfall, the trees bowing under their sodden foliage. The air smelled fresh and clean. Relieved, I breathed deeply, without setting off my cough. Somewhere ahead of me I heard a child laughing. Derek. And the answering bark of a dog. My spirits lifted. All was well, then. We could be together.

  I wanted to feel clean inside and out. I wanted to divest myself of fear. I headed for the lake, and there at the edge I impatiently unlaced my boots and threw them into the water. The water didn’t bubble and froth and dissolve them, the boots simply bobbed for a moment and sank out of sight.

  I ripped the clothes from my body. Layer after layer. Rag after rag. Methodically at first, desperately at the end. My pale grey flesh disgusted me—thin and unwholesome and difficult to look at—but I was determined now not to hide from my own gaze. Not my memories, not my fears, not my hopes, and certainly not my physical reality.

  Naked, I plunged waist deep into the lake. I expected to be burned by the water, but instead found myself stunned and exhilarated by the sharp coldness of it. Shivering, I walked farther in until the water lapped at my breasts.

  I heard Derek calling my name joyfully, and I smiled. It filled my heart with an unknown warmth to hear his pleasure. How good it is to love and be loved. I dropped backwards, lifted my feet, let the water carry me, surround me. I lay my head back, and the water pulled me down. Eyes open, I studied my surroundings, watched the minnows dash this way and that among the reeds. I sank lower, breathed out, watched the bubbles escaping, heading for the sunshine at the surface.

  And breathed in.

  IN KINDNESS

  With weary resignation I joined the throng of people shuffling into the station while surreptitiously attempting to hike my underwear up underneath my skirt. The elastic in my pants was a little worn, and both they and my tights were heading south alarmingly quickly. I glanced around, recognising that the fiddling with my undergarments was bound to be recorded on CCTV somewhere.

  I scowled. I was hot, sweaty, and completely fed up. It was Friday afternoon rush hour in Central London and an unseasonably warm day. Too warm. I had had no desire to even visit London—a city deluded by its own bloody self-importance. My manager had decreed I spend the best part of the working day in a meeting with a client, at the client’s convenience rather than mine. That was fine as far as it went, but I had expected to finish at three, allowing me plenty of time to travel to Paddington and catch my train back to Exeter. I’d be home reasonably early and able to enjoy my weekend.

  That had been the plan. The meeting had overrun. Of course it had. These male bigwigs, they like the sound of their own voices and relish the power they have of dictating what the rest of us do, how and when. The client droned on and on and on. He had nothing new or interesting to say after the first thirty minutes, and yet all day I remained awkwardly seated, looking slightly to my left at him, therefore ending up with a crick in the neck. All the while I nodded, smiled, appearing intelligent and interested, resisting the urge to yawn, to allow my eyes to glaze over, or to start dribbling into my coffee.

  Speaking of coffee, I had definitely consumed too much. And eaten too many biscuits. The waist band of my skirt felt tight, I badly needed to pee, and damn it, there went my tights again.

  I paused at the top of the steps to try and pull everything back into place. An old woman heading laboriously up the stairs caught my eye and smiled. She was wearing a bright yellow scarf. Canary yellow. It was the perfect colour for a spring day, and for a moment I was mesmerised by her. She was carrying a number of old plastic bags, stuffed full of belongings, and a large wicker basket containing packages. She was small and slight, but thanks to her bags, she was taking up a fair amount of space. People rushed past her, oblivious to her load.

  I was in the way. Behind me some ignoramus tutted loudly, then swore and jolted past me, knocking my arm as he went. My fingers snagged in my waist band and ripped the nail from my middle finger.

  “Oh for fuck’s sake!” I said a little too loudly. Some woman heading up into the open air gave me a disapproving look. What? Like she’d never cursed in her life?

  The idiot who had purposefully bumped into me steamed down towards the underground passage. Obviously in a bit of a rush, he didn’t care who he bu
lldozed out of his way. I started down the stairs after him and watched helplessly as he ploughed into the woman with the canary yellow scarf.

  In the immediate aftermath of the collision, the woman hung in time, briefly suspended in mid-air, but she had been knocked off balance and inevitably she began to fall backwards. Open-mouthed, I lunged for her, watching as she let go of her basket. I couldn’t get past the people in front of me though, and I couldn’t have reached her in time. She toppled backwards, slid down the steps, and landed on her bottom, in an undignified heap of skirts and coat and bags and packages.

  The woman howled in anger. Two people stopped to help but recoiled from her ferocity and quickly hurried away. Other people side-stepped her and her packages. Everyone else ignored her. I was gobsmacked. Everyone in London was so damn busy and selfish they couldn’t stop to help another human being? Seriously?

  I reached the bottom of the stairs, picking up packages as I went. The first thing that hit me was her stench. She stank. Unclean. Old dried urine. And worse. I tried not to breathe it in.

  “Are you all right, love?” I asked, straightening her basket and popping her packages back inside.

  Her wide and wandering eyes were a startling pale green, her face old and lined, grey with tiredness. “My things...” she beseeched me, her voice cracked with age.

  I nodded. Her plastic bags had not fallen far. From what I could see they contained clothes and newspapers, some photos, and tins of food. The paper packages from the basket had scattered a little further afield. I couldn’t tell what was in them. People bustled around me as I fumbled on the floor, trying to collect everything.

  I returned everything and knelt next to her. Her chin was on her chest, her stringy hair flat against her skull. “Are you hurt?” I asked. “Or do you think you can stand up?”

  She sighed theatrically and nodded, and so I put one hand under her left armpit and the other around her right elbow and hoisted her to her feet. She was as light as a feather. Her bulk was caused by the layers of clothes she was wearing. She might as well have been stuffed with goose down.