“Does she know what the roads are like? Do you remember what it was like to get here?”
“Yes.” He said and looked over his shoulder to the sea. “We thought going by boat might be easier, especially now whilst the sea is so calm. Adam is in Kingsbridge right now trying to find a suitable boat.”
“You can't stop that guy from getting involved with a boat, can you?”
“I am going to go with them.” Edwin didn't find my comment amusing.
“What do you think London is like right now?”
“I don't know exactly what to expect, there will be a lot more organs about, we've given them enough time now to corrode their way into freedom. There may be prisoners as well, gangs even.”
“Are you sure it is worth it?”
“Art is not a priority of mine, but if there is to be a trip back to London, well, the sooner the better.”
“Are you taking guns?”
“Yes.” He said. “Look Harry, we need you up at the hotel. We might be gone for a couple of days, and I would feel a lot more comfortable if you were there.”
“What about Roger?”
“Roger is staying at the hotel, and obviously the others will be there, but just in case anything happens, the more people there the better, don't you think?”
I left shortly after Edwin, and drove to the hotel, I clung to the thought that Edwin had insisted I go back to the hotel because he saw Rosie missed me and that she was too proud to tell me, or come and find me herself. I let doubt creep into my mind that actually the situation had gotten worse, and I would only be returning to help Roger build fires or drive around looking for tools, I pushed the thoughts out and imagined people attacking the hotel, having to fire a machine gun out of one of the windows and throwing Molotov cocktails at approaching armoured vehicles. I imagined Guy getting shot and Al hiding in a bedroom asking, “Is it over yet?” Sally waddling around with her clipboard telling me how much ammo I could use and Tom trying to save the hotel's furniture, heroically backed up against a mahogany biblioteque, his arms outstretched to either side, guarding it with his life. Rosie is a blur, sitting on the end of a bed with her legs crossed, peacefully out of focus and bathed in sunlight turned white through sheer lace curtains.
17th August
The next two days were in fact very uneventful, I smoked a lot whilst sitting on the wall of the hotel car park, looking out over the coast line, and watching the still water gently lap at the sand forty or fifty feet beneath me. Rosie and I walked along the beach and she asked me why I had left for so long and I mumbled out my pre-designed explanation and she asked me questions about my feelings that I hadn't prepared for and I mumbled out some more words and hoped she thought I was being strong and that in fact the emotions I felt were too overwhelming to be conveyed out loud. I think she saw through me, but I couldn't be sure, she told me that I shouldn't abandon my feelings for peace of mind, which I ignored.
In the evening we all played scrabble and Rosie won. Guy still had long hair, I felt victorious.
From my room that night I saw five fires, Roger had had to wait for the tide to go out to expose the day's enquiring organs.
Everyone started to get a little nervous on the second night when the three had not returned. Supper was quiet. The silence was occasionally bludgeoned by hypotheses from Sally and Al, a gun fight, a shipwreck, disease, imprisonment by enraged convicts high on unguarded drugs. Rosie left the table and I found her sitting in the windowsill of her bedroom looking out to sea.
“What do you suppose has happened? Where are they?” She asked me.
“I don't know, but I’m sure they're fine. They probably just had too much to grab in such a short space of time. The roads in London are all blocked up, so it's probably just taking them longer than they thought to gather all the pieces that Annabelle is after.”
“It was like this before, and I hated it. Edwin used to get sent off and I wouldn't see him for weeks or months and he wouldn't be able to tell us when he was getting back, and there was nothing to do but wait and hope and I hated it. I hate it.” Tears began to form in the corners of her eyes and run down her cheeks.
“Your brother and Adam are two of the most resourceful and intelligent people I’ve ever met. I promise you they'll be fine. I promise you that tomorrow or the next day, a boat will sail up to the shore and we'll have to spend the next few days getting ordered about and told to move one painting there, and another one here and the told where to hang certain things, and then asked why they aren't straight. They'll be fine.”I remembered telling Jessica a similar thing.
I tried to reassure her some more, and she eventually stopped crying. She talked about how stupid Sally and Al were, and how she wished they would just , “Go away.” I laughed and revved her on and we got a bottle of wine from the cellar. Rosie chose it and came back to the windowsill of her room. We sat facing each other with my feet on either side of her, and hers, in frilly white socks, tucked under me.
“I wish he wouldn't do it at night.” Rosie said looking at the fires below.
“What? You think it might be like a signal?”
“It's so hot but I can't bare to sleep with my window open, the smell.”
“It's getting worse. There are five or six fires out there right now, more and more of them keep coming. If it keeps up like this, by Christmas there could twenty or thirty of the things each day.”
“But how do they get here, I mean, why do they come here?”
“Adam thinks it's the cars, every time one of us drives through a town, maybe they pick up the scent and one by one follow it back here.”
“They don't eat anything, how do they survive though? Humans can't live for two weeks without food, how have they survived for so long?”
“I don't know Rosie, something to ask Adam, I bet he'll have an answer for you.”
“Can we share a cigarette and maybe have the window open, it might hide the smell?” She said and I gleefully obliged.
She held the cigarette just in front of her knuckles and lifted her whole hand in front of her face with each tiny drag. Her face was no longer red from sadness, but rosy from the wine. We were on our second bottle and I felt warm inside; I wanted to squeeze her cheeks and kiss her and hug her; I wanted to hold her tiny ankles above her little white socks; I wanted to hold her soft hands; I wanted to feel the nape of her neck and run my fingers through her hair; I wanted to rub my thumb along her bottom lip; I wanted to have my arms around her; I wanted each and every bit of her to be a part of me; I wanted to protect her and I wanted her to feel safe.
We drank another bottle of wine and smoked more cigarettes, Rosie still covering her mouth with each one. At 2am she told me she was tired and that we should go to sleep and opened the door for me to leave. Then she sat on the end of her bed and I lingered by the door, not wanting to leave, lascivious thoughts rushing through my mind, probably betrayed by my drunken eyes, I left before I was too obvious. The door clicked as I released the handle and I stood outside for a lifetime, feeling the adrenaline pulsating through my veins that was so far removed from the rejected hollow that I felt in my chest. Alone I walked along the silent corridor to my room. Then the handle behind me pulled down and clicked, Rosie half stood in the doorway looking at me in the corridor and she whispered my name. My heart started racing, the blood poured like a waterfall off my shoulders into my chest; my face was hot and I walked back to her door. She stepped out into the corridor and put both hands on my waist. Her soft skin, a half smile and nervous eyes all looking up at me. I put both hands on her cheeks, with my fingers just creeping into her hair and I pulled her towards me and kissed her. Then she pulled away and said good night and I said good night.
18th August
I awoke to the white room, trapped in white bedsheets, feeling my soul beneath my skin, knowing its orange colour. I ignored the red wine's grasp on my brain and its constant tapping behind me eyes. I met Roger on the beach and we nodded to each other, and I
was smiling from ear to ear and he grunted a ,“Morning.' I grinned back and waded into the sea, diving into a small wave and feeling the salt water dilute my hangover. The water was cold, it was early and the air was still thin. I dried off in the sand, and smoked and thought about Rosie, and smugly continued to smile. I smiled in a way that if I saw myself without explanation, I would have wanted to punch that grinning face square in the nose. The thought made me smile more and I smoked more, holding the cigarette in the corner of my smug grin. A large boat rested in the distance and I concluded that the others must have arrived during the night or early in the morning, but that is all I thought about them and I carried on thinking about the previous night. I smiled and laughed to myself, or maybe out loud when I thought about some of the things I'd said, and I hid my head in the sand when I recollected upon others. I felt electric, pinched by anticipation, I didn't want to stay still, I wanted to roll around in the sand like a dog, dig a whole and store some of the sensation so that I could come back to it later.
Roger started two fires in the morning, presumably Rosie had talked to him.
Edwin and Adam ferried pieces of art to and from the boat, and luckily for me, it was only feasible to have two people in the dingy at one time, so all I had to do was carry paintings from the shore to the hotel. Without the help of the small gallery plaques, I failed to identify the majority of the paintings they had collected except for the images themselves. Full bellied woman, battle scenes, rooms of posing people and disjointed shapes all rested against my chest before being ungracefully stacked in the hallway of the hotel.
Rosie greeted me amicably in the hallway and fingered through the stack of paintings as though they were posters in a box. Annabelle and Sally queried over a clipboard and seemingly inventoried our new assets. Annabelle was tall and thin with dark brown hair. Her nose crooked in the middle like a squashed can. She wore a long black dress down to her ankles and black, pointed shoes that stabbed out at the floor. She looked like something a child might run from. She kissed me twice on the cheek when we were introduced, I still had sand on my face and it scratched in-between us and afterwards I hid from her behind an armchair.
Rosie was talking to Guy, and he had ostensibly studied art history at university so had all sorts of lies to sell her about how excited he was; how he loved that painting and this painting, and how if only, they had also got some other painting from a different artist, and I thought about headbutting him. Rosie also ignored me and it annoyed me and it quashed my morning's excitement. When I asked how she was and if she slept well she told me I should go and help Edwin because, “There really is a lot of work to be done.” I loathed it, and I despised myself for complying and going to help Edwin with more paintings, knowing Guy would continue to wrap his overgrown tongue around obsequious adjectives and flop his disgusting greasy hair in Rosie's direction.
Two more trips; four more painting, sweating with aching arms, Annabelle even asked me if I could be more gentile in my manner and all the while I was just laying ammunition at Guy's feet.
I welcomed the interruption of the all black 4X4 that gingerly drove across the tidal path towards the hotel. I was sitting on the shore, smoking, waiting to be loaded with another batch of paintings, which gratefully Adam and Edwin left in the dingy when they reached the shore and paced towards the gates of our island. I could see Roger in the distance, he'd stopped hacking at the charred organs at his feet and was holding the shovel over his shoulder. I ambled in the shallow footprints on the sand towards the gate, behind Edwin and Adam. The windows of the car in the distance slid down and my brain conjured their electronic hum. When I reached them, I picked up that they had been living in Bristol when things got unbearable in the city so they had decided to drive into the fresh air of the countryside when they had seen the smoke from Roger's fires. Adam invited them inside to chat further, but it was clear that they were not welcome, ignoring this they took up the invitation and parked their black 4X4 in the car park. Edwin went inside ahead of all of us and Adam delayed them, chatting to them about their car. One of them asked me for a light and walked me to the wall overlooking the coastline and told me through his nose that I had a, “Sweet set-up!” He was skinny and pale, wearing a oversized white t-shirt and his gangly matchsticks arms which were covered in freckles protruded from baggy sleeves and exaggerated everything he said. He had beady eyes and a small head with short hair and spoke as if he had something to prove. I felt uncomfortable, a prodrome of panic as I thought I might inadvertently invite him to stay forever and complicate the little world I was already struggling to deal with. I wanted him to think I was violent, that he shouldn't be talking to me and that I might erupt at any second and push him to the floor and put my cigarette out on in one of his eyes, the left one, but I didn't know how, instead I said nothing at all and starred into the distance as if I was thinking about leaving this place myself, as if I was planning my escape from the prison that was Burgh island. I watched the end of the cigarette and inhaled as if it might be my last one before I vanished, and continued to ignore him as he kept on talking to the side of my face, asking me questions and then answering them himself, telling me about the drive over here and renaming the horrors that were on the mainland. To my consternation he didn't get my feebly crafted message, he just kept asking me if, ”I knew?”, or more telling me that “I knew?”
When after what felt like forever, Edwin reappeared out of the front door and Adam ushered the burly two he was talking to inside, and thankfully the Jack Russell next to me followed them. The doors to the sitting room with the arm chairs and fireplace were shut and they walked through the black and white entrance into the dining room and sat around a large wooden table. There was no sight of the others, presumably Edwin had told the women to remain unseen, and inferable Al stayed in hiding with them and Guy stood over them with the pretence of protection.
“So how can we help you gentlemen.” Adam said calmly. Sitting opposite the three men.
The man, whose head resembled a bowling ball grunted. “Nice place you got here.”
“Really nice.” Said the skinny Jack Russell, gesturing with his gangly arms and looking around the room.
“Yes, well, how can we help?”
“What you got on here?” He grunted again, rasping out the question.
“Just trying to keep going, like everyone else I imagine.”
“Only the four of you, looks like you could use a few more hands.” He said, and turned, grinning to the two men on his left and right.
“Thank you for the offer, but we are quite capable, and we are already running very low on supplies. We won't be able to stay here much longer.”
“Oh yeah?” He grunted. “Why would you leave. You can go get supplies any time you want”
“Maybe, but we don't have any power here and no fresh water.” He lied, and I hadn't noticed, but Edwin must have turned the generator off, it's faint rumble could no longer be heard and none of the lights above us were switched on. “It is not ideal. If we had gotten our act together sooner, well, somewhere like Windsor castle would be a luxurious place to be. What about you three, have you got anywhere in mind?”
“Why don't you just get a generator? There is free fuel out there, all you gotta do is take it.” He paused calculatingly. “I see you already got that tanker in the car park. We get you a generator and we could run this place for years.”
“Thank you for the offer, but we really do think this is not the best place to be.”
“Why not?”
“It is too big, there is limited storage space in the cellar. The sea will rust all of our vehicles, the tidal path dictates when we can leave. There are no women here” He lied. “It doesn't preclude too well to our survival, let alone an enjoyable and easy life.”
“Women.” He said and turned and grinned to his two friends. “Yes, women, well wouldn't that me nice.”
“Yes.” Adam replied.
“Mind if we stick about for a coupl
e of days. Me and the boys could do with a couple of nights in a five star hotel. Wouldn't you like that boys? Don't you think we deserve that?” He said greedily to his left and right.
“Of course you are welcome to stay a night, get some rest before getting on your way.”
“Hear that boys, they are letting us stay a night in their five star hotel.” He said with an aggressively sarcastic tone.
“There are plenty of five star hotels in the area, we can give you a map as well and mark out where we think good locations are for the three of you to deservedly rest up for a while.”
“Why don't we stay a night and see how we feel in the morning. Who knows, maybe we'll stay longer than just the one night.” He said looking around. “Seems like a nice place to me. What do you think boys?”
“Yeah, real sweet place you know?” The gangly man on his left said, and the man on his right silently nodded in agreement.
“Settled then, we stay here tonight. You got room keys for us. I fancy a nice view. Something on the top floor.”
“I'm afraid the top floor is off limits.”
“To us?” The man grunted.
“To everyone.” He lied again. “There were guests in those rooms, and we haven't cleared out the bodies.”
“Well, I’m sure you'll find us three of your nicest rooms.” He said unashamedly grinning at Adam, relishing in the power of fear. “Come on boys, why don't we go for a walk on that marvellous beach out there, and give these gentlemen time to ready our rooms.”
We moved into the sitting room, where we could watch the three men walk along the beach and be sure that they couldn't hear us. Edwin was uncharacteristically panicked which was disconcerting. He calmed down when Tom came down and reminded everyone that the five of them could lock themselves inside their rooms on the top floor, and take all the keys with them so that no one could get in. Tom also refreshed three rooms on the third floor that were next to each other at the end of a corridor. Edwin gathered a pistol for each person and loaded them, he gave the four of us a brief explanation about how to use it and then went upstairs and did the same with Al, Sally, Annabelle, Rosie and Guy. It was too surreal and his words melted away in my mind and I hid the gun in my room, wrapped in a t-shirt and under the mattress. Adam and Roger started putting candles around the stairs and the dining room. They locked the doors to the sitting room and paced around the house picking up items of clothing that clearly didn't belong to the four of us. We locked the door to the cellar, and hid any tins, bottles and medicines that were accessible, running them upstairs and locking them in bedrooms on the fourth floor.
The Days After Page 10