“Then they’re not going to be keen on me still being at large, I guess.”
“I think we’ll have to assume that you being alive is a threat to their business, yes. Which means that we really need to leave the country soon as we can.”
“But I still need to get to Beer. If Jessie’s there, it’ll make the whole thing have some sense.”
“You have to accept that it could put you in danger,” said Rei quietly. “Warwick is a clever man with contacts; he may well have already worked out where you intend to go.”
“To be honest Rei, I think Mathew’s right. Look,” said Philip turning to Mathew, “I haven’t always agreed with you in the past, but I reckon your top priority at the moment is Jessica, not getting out of the country. Right?” Mathew nodded. “Then we’ll head to Beer as planned before heading to Southampton to get a boat. You’re right Rei, it isn’t the safest thing to do, but from what I know about Mathew, it’s what he needs to do.
“We should think about leaving soon.” Philip walked off to start packing the small makeshift camp into the boot of the car. Mathew and Rei exchanged puzzled glances.
“That’s not what I would have expected him to say,” stated Rei.
“Maybe he’s human after all then. We’d better pack up, I don’t want to hang around anywhere too long.” And the two of them walked over to help Philip pack their belongings.
The drive was slow and arduous, which was exacerbated by Philip’s insistence that he should drive at least part of the way. The roads were potholed and broken, and often the concrete that paved them stuck up at strange angles that necessitated them driving carefully around the small craters.
“You know nearly all roads used to be surfaced with tarmac,” Mathew noted as they wound slowly around an especially large section of broken concrete. “What happened to them?”
“Not a lot of point maintaining roads when no one really uses them, pal. I mean people travel, but not really on the scale that you guys used to. Not between towns. In the cities the roads are fine, but not out here. You got to remember that there’s no agriculture anymore. No one lives here, and travelling is expensive. Also, the only people that you’re likely to meet out on these roads are the Roamers, and, well, you’ve seen what they’re like. It ain’t really safe, so people don’t use roads less they have to, and no one bothers fixing them. Goods are moved on rail from the coast to the cities, there isn’t really a need for good roads anymore. Shit, this gearshift is a fucking mare.” With that Philip crunched the vehicle into second and bounced awkwardly across the road.
49
The day passed slowly as they headed along the poorly maintained road past the occasional farmhouses and barns, which stood abandoned and derelict. Once these must have been positioned at the end of gravel drives, Mathew thought to himself as they neared a small hamlet of empty buildings. Now the larger ones were set back from the road in isolation. Where ivy had decorated trellises against the sides of the cottages, now menacing tendrils crept along the windowsills and through the damaged architraves of once well-maintained houses. Occasionally they would pass through larger settlements and see people, who would invariably stop to stare at the vintage car. Mathew wondered whether Beer would still be the bustling little fishing village he remembered, or one of these terrible ghost towns. By the end of the day they would know.
“Sorry, but I really need a toilet stop,” Rei said a little shyly.
Philip slowed the car down along the side of the road and brought it to a sudden stop, swearing at the gear stick under his breath. All three of them got out, and Rei announced that she would be quick as she disappeared across the field.
“Do you want me to drive?” asked Mathew.
“Can do, my hand is really start to ache again. “But I’m getting the hang of this,” Philip said grinning, pointing to the car.
“Yeah, you’re like a real pro, mate.”
“I remember people driving, you know. When I was a kid there were still cars like this around. Well, not quite like this, but you get what I mean.”
“A lot’s changed since the 1990s, hasn’t it.” Mathew looked around at the empty countryside. It was the first time he realised how out of place the car looked here. “You know,” he continued, “I don’t think I did the right thing back then.”
“With the cryonics?”
“Well, yeah, but not just that. I really felt that I’d miss Jessie growing up, but I was so involved in work and all the crap that goes with it, I just don’t know that I wouldn’t have missed it all anyway.”
“I tell you what, pal, from what I’ve seen of you, I reckon you’d have worked that out before long. I bet you’d have been a great parent. It’s just circumstance, ain’t it. We all want to be in control, and then you just get hit by life.”
“‘Life’s what happens to us while we’re busy making other plans.’ Now that was John Lennon.”
“The trouble is,” said Philip as Rei arrived back at the car, “that you couldn’t stand the fact that you’re life wasn’t like one of those trashy twentieth century novels.”
“What do you mean?” asked Mathew.
“You know the ones. Where everything works out fine in the end and everyone has a great life and there’s always a happy ending. Well, life’s not like that, is it. There aren’t any happy endings, you know why? ’Cos in real life everyone dies in the end. All the life stories of everyone in the world end identically: you die. And you couldn’t stand that reality, you tried to change it and, now you’re pissed ’cos it didn’t work, and perhaps you’re now wondering if your life wasn’t better first time round.”
Rei had returned and interrupted: “I think you may be a little too pessimistic, Philip. Stories have happy endings because most authors don’t continue the story through until the point where all the characters die. If they did all the stories in the world would end unhappily. But everyone’s life should have a range of high points and low points. Mathew just felt that his life was unfulfilled and incomplete, because he realised it was being snatched away from him too early, and he found a way to change that. And you are not saying, surely, that you are just now waiting for death to come for you.”
“No I’m not, but I do accept it. I’m not running from my own mortality. I remain deeply in touch with the concept that I have a limited time on this planet.”
“Then why do you not use it more wisely?”
“I do. But I also know that ultimately there won’t be a happy fairytale ending, and I’m just saying that people from Mathew’s time were so socially ingrained in culture, their films and books, that they didn’t except that.”
“I don’t think that’s true at all,” Mathew said, rather put out at the bad mouthing of his entire century, and feeling particularly defensive of it all of a sudden. “It’s true that people wanted escapism, but we were not under any pretence about our lives. The late twentieth century was probably the first time people really were sure about their mortality, because it was the first time since the days of cavemen when we looked for something beyond a god to explain life and death.”
“Maybe Mathew is not scared of dying as much as you are scared of living.”
“Thank you Rei,” Mathew acknowledged, leaning on a fence post that stuck up from the ground unconnected to anything else. “Maybe that is right. You sound like someone who’s been so affected by death that you accept it too much. It might be inevitable, but it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t strive to live in the meantime. So whose death left you this suspicious of life?” Suddenly Mathew realised that this chance comment may have struck a chord, and he looked at Philip in a different light.
“Is that what happened, Philip?” enquired Rei. “Are you this cynical and alone because you lost someone?”
Philip said nothing, but turned towards the car.
“Philip,” Rei called. “Philip, what happened? Did your child die?”
“It was all a long time ago,” he replied, stopping with his hand
on the door, but not turning around. Rei and Mathew walked up level to him. The wind blew Philip’s hair about as he stood almost motionless in the open landscape. “I had a son,” he eventually said. “He was murdered.”
“Oh my God,” exclaimed Rei. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“Well, it’s my issue to deal with and my problem, and we have been rather busy lately. I try not to think about him. I spent a long time doing nothing else, and over the last few years I try not to dwell on it at all. But since we’ve been searching for Mathew’s family, well, I keep thinking about what happened.”
“Well maybe blocking it out isn’t the best to deal with these emotions, Philip,” Rei said gently. “Are you still in touch with his mother?”
“No. She died too. They were killed together.”
“I’m so sorry, mate, I don’t know what to say.”
“It’s ok, Mathew, it was over ten years ago, it’s not like it just happened.”
“What were their names?” asked Rei.
“Kyle was my boy, he’d be a teenager now. My wife was Nomsa. She was pregnant at the time, too. But…” he trailed off.
“Was this when you were in the army?” asked Mathew.
“Yeah, I was in Mozambique. Been stationed there a couple of years. Nomsa worked at the embassy there.”
“What happened? I mean, only if you want to say.”
“No it’s fine. Wrong place, wrong time. We were caught up in events that were larger than we were. It was during the coup; rioting and looting spread right across Maputo. I was working in a unit trying to restore order. Hopeless really considering there were only a few dozen of us. We were deployed thinly across the city, firing live ammunition at kids with guns and rocket launchers. It wasn’t what I signed up wanting to do. Some of them were more than happy to die for their cause ’cos they’d been told that they were going straight to heaven. They’d just shoot anyone. It was chaos. And all in the name of God and religion. This is what people like Deon need to see; that this blinkered view of theirs can end up costing people their lives. It all kicked off really suddenly. We ended up shooting about ten kids dead; they were all about 15 to 17 years old. You really can’t imagine that kids that age would have so much pent up hate, but they did. They’d rather die than allow us to take them in. When it was over we had to retreat to the safe part of the city, well, what we thought was safe. We already knew that they’d move us out, we couldn’t stay there. We all went to collect our families and whatever we could bring with us so that we could leave when the vehicles arrived that night. When I got to the block where Nomsa and Kyle were staying the insurgents had already been. It was a military housing unit for a couple of platoons of the European Defence Corps, so they’d seen it was a legitimate target. It had been attacked and burned out, but they’d been through it first, rounded up everyone they could find, which of course were all the wives and kids of the servicemen, ’cos we were all deployed across town. They herded them into the central courtyard, and shot them all. Then they set fire to the bodies. I don’t know if Nomsa watched Kyle die, or the other way round. When I found out, I just lost it.”
“And did they catch who’d done this?”
“No, it was a riot, no one was ever going to find out for sure, and we were all told to get out as soon as the authorities knew what happened there. I think they were scared we’d go out to settle the score.”
“My God, that’s awful. So there was never any justice to it.”
“Well, not really. Before we left three of us went into town. We’d really lost control. We found a group of fighters, I’m not even sure now how we did find them, but we did. We knew them, vaguely, I mean seen them around the place, recognised their faces. And we took these five lads back to the block and showed them the charred corpses and asked who’d done this. Obviously they wouldn’t say. I got one of them, the one who looked the weakest, I got him to lie on the floor and pointed my gun to his head and just kept saying: ‘Who did this? Who?’ And you could see that he was terrified. But his friends just kept quiet. I fired a shot into the air, and I remember screaming at this kid, ‘Tell me who did this, or else I’ll kill you, I’ll fucking kill you.’ He started crying and you could see that he’d pissed himself, but his friends were more resolved, and one of them said, ‘I’m glad your bitch is dead and your bastard son, you Muslim fucker.’ And I just turned to him, stared straight into his eyes, and fired one shot straight into his head, and he just fell away like a rag doll. Then I turned to the kid in front of me, and he was just whimpering and pleading for me not to kill him, and I hated him so much, I was about to pull the trigger again, and I looked him in the eye, and just thought, Christ this is someone’s son, is that the look that Kyle had in his eyes before he died, and I just stood there thinking, with this gun resting on his head between the eyes. Then my crew grabbed me and pulled me away from the others, but I’d have killed every one of them where they lay at one stage. We left that night, and I was asked to leave the forces the following week. It was all kept fairly quiet, the army does that; it looks after its own. It’s not something I’m very proud of. Trouble is that once you’ve done something like that it stays with you. I can’t change what I did, any more than I could bring my wife and kid back. My penance is that I have to live with it.”
Mathew and Rei exchanged glances.
“Well you can hardly be held responsible for your actions under the circumstances,” said Rei eventually.
“Yeah I can. I knew what I was doing when I fired. Maybe it was that kid who did it, maybe not. The other four we left there, but I imagine that they’re dead now. Probably died not long after. Anyway, not many people know about that, and I’d prefer to keep it that way.”
“Yeah, course.”
“I’m glad that you feel you could trust us enough to tell us that,” Rei said quietly.
“I guess I must trust you two a little. I’m not sure why I just told you all that, but I feel better for having said it. I haven’t told anyone since the investigation. After that I just felt that maybe if I could tell people what really happened in the world, I could stop anyone else going through something like that. I couldn’t face going into teaching, seeing kids all the time, so I started writing for the press, but somehow I just became another hack.”
“Well mate,” said Mathew, “if it’s any consolation, you don’t just seem like an old hack to me. I appreciate your honesty, it must have been very hard.”
“Yeah, well, like I said, it’s history. Now, we’ve got to get moving.”
Without letting the other two restart the conversation Philip tossed Mathew the keys and got into the passenger side. “We’ve still got some kilometres to cover,” he yelled back.
It was early evening by the time they reached their destination. The skies had clouded over and the forecast suggested a storm was imminent in the region. The car chugged reluctantly along the overgrown roads and despite the satellite positioning system on Philip’s c-pac they took over an hour finding the road down the steep and narrow route into Beer.
Mathew was surprised at how little the town had changed in the century since he’d last been here. It was bigger, and more run down, but still retained an isolated charm. Many of the buildings were, he guessed, the same ones he’d known, and he figured that some of them must be two hundred years or more old now. The stream that had run down the side of the main street was buried now, although it surfaced at various points along the road. The shops that lined the main street were largely boarded up and abandoned, although some antique shops and a couple of food stores and cafés remained. The High Street was broken up and overgrown where it met the pavement, with weeds growing between the cracks in the slabs. They drove slowly down the approach to the sea, all of them looking with interest at this relic of a different age. Meanwhile the inhabitants seemed equally enthralled at the three strangers driving a twentieth century motor through their town, and heads turned as they passed.
“It’s like one
of those old experiential museums they used to have when we were kids,” Philip commented, looking at the rows of Victorian buildings. “Sorry,” he added, looking round at his companions, “I don’t suppose either of you had those.”
They took a turning near the sea front and pulled the car into the side of the road. Rei checked the details on the town from her c-pac.
“Mathew, do you know your way here? I’ve got directions for the address Deon gave us.”
“No, it’s fine. I checked myself earlier. It should be about 2 miles along this road,” he said, pointing down the track that ran parallel to the sea. “If it’s ok with you, I’ll go down on my own, I need to think what I’m going to say and, well, it’s all a bit weird.”
“No fucking shit pal. Right, me and Rei will see if anyone knows where we can get some gas and some sleep. There’s a hotel up here according to the map,” Philip checked his printout. “Yeah, the Prince William. We’ll book a room and you can come in later.”
“What if they don’t have one?”
“Mathew, look around you. There’s fuck all here. Do you really think that they’ll be over booked?”
“Ok, I was just thinking out loud.”
“The more thinking you do pal, the harder this gets for the rest of us.”
“Ok you two,” interjected Rei. “Let’s try and keep it cool. We are all tired and I am sure this will be very stressful for Mathew. We’ll book a room, and whatever you find here, Mathew, we’ll look at and readdress the situation tomorrow. We still have a day to get to Southampton. How far is that from here?”
“Not far, about 140K.”
“Fine, so we are good for time still. Mathew, do you want anything before you go?”
“No thanks, Rei. I just need a little time to myself first. I’ll take a slow walk towards Seaton and try and work out what I’m going to say.”
The Relic Keeper Page 29