“How don't you get scurvy? What do you have to fill you up with your meals?” Sally asked.
“At my age, anything I eat tends to go straight here.” He said and patted his stomach. “A simple bit of fish or steak is all I need.”
“But what about scurvy? You know, all the pirates used to get it when they were at sea from not having any fruit or veg.”
“Yes my dear, but I have never been too fond of cold food. A simple vitamin pill taken each day seems to do the trick.”
“I ain't going to argue with you on that one, cold food, Ugh.” She added, sticking her disgusting yellow topped tongue out and scrunching her face. “I normally have a bag of all sorts in the freezer and just pop them on the boil for five minutes.”
Adam leant his pointed chin around the side of his arm chair towards the two talking and then looked at us, “What have you three been eating this last month?”
Edwin started. “I was on military ration packs for those twenty days and then when I got back to London I was sharing cans of soup with Rosie because she couldn't have solids. Otherwise, toast in the morning, sometimes with a bit of jam, but not much else.”
“Yes, I was in a coma after the car accident and I guess the hospital fed me through a drip or a tube or something, and then, when Edwin got back we had soup everyday.” Rosie touched the white plaster on her neck as she spoke.
The eyes of the room looked upon me.
“I was eating normal food, not just soup like everyone else. I mean, everything I had was all frozen and I just cooked it in the aga.”
“We were on the yacht during that time eating food out of the freezer or in some cases fresh fish, but nothing fresh from the ground. We've been here since we docked at Plymouth eating mostly food from cans and also dry foods.”
Tom nervously interrupted, “You're wife Adam, she 's been in the kitchen, she's been eating some carrots and celery from the store.”
“She's still up there.” Adam muttered and then leapt out of his chair and thrust his way through the arm chairs and disappeared into the hallway.
4th August
I wasted the morning on the deck under the sun, fish fingers and green peas with a smudge of ketchup on a white plate, a beer from the freezer even though it was probably only 10am. I rubbed the blue sun lotion into my legs and neck and enjoyed the smell of holidays. With half my mind I thought about how nonchalant I looked holding the green bottle by its neck, my legs dangling from the wood over the green grass and the quicksilver sea in front of me. With the other half of my mind I contemplated the previous night and the present where I was not present, I pictured the hotel and Edwin enthusiastically committing to a future, standing assertively over miscellaneous people and pieces of dark wooden furniture, hands on hips, blue jeans tucked into green Wellington boots planted on the black and white floor. I thought about how Rosie had not returned with me; how she had stayed with Edwin and spent the night at the hotel, and how I had hoped that she would come back but had not wanted to sound too keen, and so had left the hotel with an indifference which in retrospect probably came off as either arrogant or naively complacent, and which I now regretted, “Fucking idiot!” I told no one.
12th August
The days floated by and I kept myself busy, visiting the hotel and running errands for the patchwork group: gathering wood, food, water and even finding a diesel tank truck on an expedition with a taciturn Roger, we left it in the car park of the hotel, struggled and gave up on trying to extract the fuel from its clumsy metallic nozzles. The heatwave continued and the blue sky seldom gave way. Rosie and I walked some days for hours along the beach, she swam every time, mostly wearing a polka dot swimsuit, and I would roll up my jeans and stand in the shallows watching her. There were no gulls and no wind and day after day the small waves would crash against my shins and I would relish the scene. It reminded me of adverts I’d seen in the past for holidays in Turkey or the Bahamas, where couples in white shirts walked arm in arm, laughing along a desolate white sand shore line, someone else's perception of paradise that I now effortlessly owned.
Adam disappeared for a few days from the hotel and everyone was a bit lost, even Sally, although she would never have admitted to it. Edwin patrolled around, always with a hammer or some tool in his hand and a black book in his back pocket that he would periodically pull out and take notes in. Whenever he came into a room, he clapped his hands and rubbed them together in anticipation and always seemed to be asking if someone would like to lend him a hand. I stayed out of his way for fear of having to fix a drain pipe or watch an organ for an hour and make notes about its movements. I would like to think that because he never saw me lounging in an armchair or sleeping-in, that he thought I was being productive, not just following his sister around.
Each night I would return to the cottage and Rosie would stay at the hotel, and each night I would regret not asking her to come back with me. The organs did however, the limp mounds of flesh waited for me on the drive down through the village, and in the morning they would be there, pressed up against the wooden gate, bobbles of red protruding through the mesh hexagons of the chicken wire that Edwin had engineered. They looked almost sad but I ignored them each morning as they moped against the wood like dogs pawing at a door, until three of them had merged, or one had eaten the other two. Whatever had happened in the night, there was now one enormous organ leant halfway up the gate and when I pulled the gate to, the top half oozed back into its bottom half and encroached into the driveway. Once I had driven past it and gone back to close the gate, I couldn't, the organ was in the way, like a door stop. I had to tie a rope between the car and the gate in order to budge it out of the way and force the gate shut. Not only that, but it had corroded away half the thickness of the gate, a good few centimetre into the wood. I covered the thing in petrol from a cannister I had in the boot of the car and watched it burn, a ball of fire, pulsating, the fist like beat inside it punching at different sides as if there was something trapped inside trying to burst free. The smell of a steakhouse kitchen filled the air and turned my stomach. I hid in the car and watched it burn in the mirror. I thought about what Rosie might think of me if she knew what I had just done, how, in her eyes I may have just set three people on fire and watched them burn alive. I pushed her eyes out of my mind and lit a cigarette. I waited until the flames died down until just a chard lump of meat sat on the road. I prodded it a few times, nothing. I hacked it into smaller pieces using a blunt shovel and threw them over the hedge that lined the road, leaving only a dark circle where the burning fat had stained the tarmac.
I arrived at the hotel in time to see Adam rowing towards the beach. He had sailed his yacht from Plymouth, and the white boat was now bobbing up and down not too far from shore. He tipped a wicker hat in my direction and we shared some, “Hellos,” when he made it up to the hotel. I continued to lie on the bonnet of my car, smoking and closed my eyes under the sun, hoping Rosie would see me. The inaudible words spoken between Adam and Edwin in the distance drifted above me and their conversation became mimetic of the yellow and pink shapes that were floating in the darkness of my eyelids, almost, but never to be caught.
The pair of them woke me, one of them tapping me on the shoulder, I am not sure how long I fell asleep for but the bridge of my nose felt sunburnt. In my post nap disorientation I agreed to go to Bristol with Roger to gather medical supplies, the words, “Good to have on hand, don't you think!” And the sound of hands clapping and then rubbing together was all that I can remember being sold.
Roger didn't talk much, it was nice, although, at first I found it uncomfortable and tried to make idle chit chat, but once I tired of one word answers; a one sided tennis match, I gave up and sat in silence on the squeaky cream passenger seat, staring out of the window.
We stuck together in the hospital and I had to cover my mouth with my sleeve as soon as we turned through the spinning doors, hit by the sickening stench of concentrated rotting flesh which seeped thr
ough the fibres of my shirt sleeve, up my nose and into my eyes and I could taste it on the back of my tongue. There were bodies everywhere, people collapsed in chairs in the waiting room, some had slid onto the floor and others were just lying there, outstretched on grey lino squares. Dark flesh, gaunt faces and white eyes blankly stared at the ceiling. It looked like hands from above had reached down and ripped their souls out, taking all of their insides with them. We stepped in between legs and next to closed hands, films flashed through my mind of pale fingers wrapping around my ankles and I felt myself almost jumping with terrified expectancy. We emptied cupboards into plastic bags, not stopping to read labels, just swiping packets, vials, syringes, bandages, masks, knives, thread and even plasters into the bags and hurried out of hospital, through the dark corridors of faint limbs.
We didn't talk outside and neither of us looked back, we just climbed into the car and Roger sat there in silence, he didn't put the keys in the engine, he didn't touch the steering wheel, instead he just held his head in his hands.
A red Ferrari raced past us from nowhere and slammed on its brakes, skidding to the front of the hospital entrance. Roger released his head from his hands in disbelief and I opened the door and jogged towards the entrance. By this time, the driver had already hopped out of the car and was running for the spinning doors. I shouted out to him, and he stopped at the top step and turned towards me.
“Help, you have to help. My mate's been shot.” He said. He was small and skinny wearing baggy beige shorts and a white t-shirt. Tattoos covered both sleeves of his arms and another large black one was on his calf.
“We have medical supplies.” I said with an urgency that surprised me and then waved to Roger.
“Please help. Are you a doctor?” The man said.
“No. What's happened?”
The man ran to the passenger seat of the car and opened the door. His friend was holding his stomach with blood seeping into his shirt and pooling on the black leather seat beneath him and he kept whimpering, “I've been shot.”
“Roger arrived holding the bags and immediately searched through them. He found a vile that read Morphine Sulfate Liposomal and injected it into the base of the man's neck. Meanwhile the tattooed man in the white t-shirt kept asking what he was doing, if he was a doctor and what he was giving to his friend, to which Roger did not respond until he had finished injecting the man.
“Don't eat anything fresh, we think that is how you get sick.” I said, trying to be helpful.
“You don't think I know that already, how the fuck do you think we're alive... Just tell me, what the fuck is this old dude doing?”
“I gave him some morphine to help with the pain. The next thing to do is stop the bleeding.” Roger said and pulled off his shirt. He lifted the man's blood soaked t-shirt up and Roger tied his tightly around the man's waist. He then stood up out of the view of the man and looked at the two of us and shook his head.
The tattooed man started shouting “Fuck!” at the sky and then crouched down next to his friend. “You're gunna be aight man. You're gunna be fine. I'm gunna make sure we go fuckin' kill those spics. We're gunna fuckin' kill 'em!” He had a gun inconspicuously tucked into the back of his shorts.
When the man in the car passed out moments later, the tattooed man stood up and continued to shout “Fuck!” He then touched his back, clearly checking his gun was still there.
“He's dead isn't he?” He shouted at Roger.
“I'm sorry, nothing could be done. That kind of wound. Nothing could be done. I'm sorry.”
“Fuck, I knew those spics were bad news. I should've known. You never fuckin' trust a spic on the inside, so why should it be any different on the outside. Fuck!” The man slammed the passenger door shut and climbed into the drivers seat of the red Ferrari, the engine roared and the wheels span briefly, one last, “Fuck!” And he skidded out of the car park.
“We should get back.” I said and Roger nodded in agreement.
Images of death flashed in and out of my mind and with each one I could taste the putridness of its contents, I tried to force the pictures out and focus on the red Ferrari but cold hands clawed their way back in and dragged the curtain down, revealing the dark hallway, translucent faces rose out of the bodies on the floor until I was face to face with each one and then they began to float towards me, through me, past me, I hoped, I was afraid to look back in case they weren't behind me. I fumbled out of my mind and asked Roger how he knew what to do and he told me he had worked on a farm. I didn't want to sound stupid so I didn't press him for more clarity. Perhaps he meant that animals and humans are the same, or maybe someone got shot on the farm, either way I gave up thinking about it and stared out of the window. It was a long drive and there was no distraction from the radio in the background, no distractions other than the green blurs on the other side of the glass. I flipped through the papers in the glove compartment, felt under the seat and lifted up the mat at my feet, I wanted something, anything, a CD, a book, a magazine, even a map.
“What you looking for?”
“A CD I guess, anything to take my mind off what just happened and what we just saw in the hospital.”
“Hmm. I cleaned the car out when I took it, threw everything out.” Roger said.
Back to silence. I opened the window and tried to lose myself in the sound of the wind.
“Do you mind closing the window. My ears.”
I complied and we went back to silence, but I could see his eyes flicking in my direction, watching me get agitated. Watching me pick up different vials of medicines and put them back, watching me take plasters out of their packets, stick them on my arm and peel them off. Watching me read the directions on the back of a packet of bandages.
“You like her don't you?” He said calmly.
“Who?”
“Rosie.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me, what is it that you like about her?”
“I don't know, I just like her, she's pretty.”
“No, it must be more than just that?”
“Why do you think that?”
“I'm asking you the question.”
“I guess you're right, its more than just because she is pretty.”
“Go on.”
“Well, when I’m with her, we talk, we have actual conversations.”
“What do you mean?”
“Everyone I’ve ever been with, not just girlfriends, I mean friends, family, everyone, the only conversations I ever seemed to have had were about expectations, past experiences and formed opinions; had I seen a certain film, did I like it; had I been to Africa, what did I do when I was there; where would I like to live, why, what's so special about that place?”
“But with Rosie, what do the two of you talk about?”
“It's not all the time, yes, most of the time we're talking about the same things as everybody else, but sometimes its more.
“The other day we were walking along the beach and Rosie turned to me and asked me if I believed in God, and when I ummed and arred and failed to give her an answer, she spoke about how surprised she was that no one in the group were particularly religious and how she had thought that such a disaster as this one would have brought out the religious fanatic in at least one of the nine of us. I gave her a broad reply about how religion in our multicultural rationalist society has dwindled to such a low that not only is an evangelical religious believer hard to find but is or was I should say, considered taboo, and that perhaps such a disaster as the one we have witnessed has actually humbled the others to a point where to believe in God in light of our predicament implies an arrogance of divine progeny.
“And where I expected my reply to end the conversation, it didn't, Rosie ruminated for a few minutes and began telling me about how my view was potentially correct, however, that I was trying to rationalise the argument which in itself could not wholly be applied to religion because of the inexplicable fundamentals of faith. Then she began to talk about
the future and how without continued scientific exploration, generations from now, the people will return to a world where there is no foreseeable hope to explain the unexplainable and will therefore, as they once did, use religion and faith as the only plausible answer.
“I began to argue that perhaps that wasn't a bad thing, that whilst the facilities are not available such faith is a positive, as humans we have always needed to create a hypothesis to explain away what we do not understand, in order to move on.
“Again, I thought the conversation would end there, both of us satisfied with the conclusion that religion is a necessity in a world without scientific exploration and that the future generations who exist are unlikely to be able to continue in the vein that our world had, and will therefore have to return a society based on religious principles and faith.
“Rosie, however, passionately began to list all of the horrors of religious persecution. She studied history, so she knew a lot, and she started taking me through one crusade to the next and how we must not let it happen again, and then she argued the other way, about the atrocities committed by the Nazi’s and how scientific advancement unguided by the morality prescribed through religion was potentially equally as dangerous, and that history as we know it is dead, that the generations to come won't understand our world, they won't be able to identify with any of our history and how they would not be able to learn from the mistakes of the past as we have.
“And we continued to discuss it, until the sun set and the tide came in so that we had to swim back, and when we were having supper, all of us, I could see it in Rosie's head, the thoughts rushing over her, she cares for them, they don't even exist yet, but she still wants to protect them.”
I continued to ramble at Roger about Rosie and then thanked him for taking my mind off the hospital and for the rest of the drive I silently smiled out of the window, making sure that Roger couldn't see. I pictured Rosie walking along the beach and leaving footprints behind in the wet sand; I pictured her sitting at the table when we first arrived at the cottage, with the wild flowers she had picked from the bank of the stream in her hair; I pictured her face glowing orange from the fire on the rooftop as she watched the marshmallows catch fire.
The Days After Page 8