by Jane Rogers
He’s standing there measuring, with his shoulders hunched forward, he looks a bit like an ape! He’s hairy like an ape too, with a furry chest. When Mum used to take me swimming I stared at the strange men with bare chests. He’s got broad shoulders and a thick neck but short legs, and when he turns round to smile you can see he’s got bright brown eyes and two deep smile creases carved either side of his mouth in a really monkey-ish grin. When he grins at you you can’t help yourself, you have to grin back. Except he hasn’t grinned for a long time now. Which I suppose is my fault.
I used to do my homework on the kitchen table on Tuesdays and we’d think up perfect crimes that you wouldn’t get caught for and make each other laugh. Things like, if your victim is allergic to bee stings, put a drop of honey on his collar and let loose some bees. When they sting his neck it’ll swell up and suffocate him before he can get help. Or, if you need to dispose of a corpse, put it in your car and drive to a safari park. Chuck it out for the lions when no-one’s looking. They’ll eat it up and leave no trace.
There was a Tuesday when Dad properly explained Maternal Death Syndrome to me. The news was saying it was everywhere. Rumours about unaffected tribes deep in the Amazon rainforest or amongst the Inuit of the frozen north, all of them were untrue. It wasn’t just the West, or the First World, or cities. There were some pregnant women left, but only ones who were far on in their pregnancies; women who must have got pregnant before MDS arrived. Once these women gave birth, it seemed there wouldn’t be any more babies.
‘I don’t understand,’ I said to Dad. ‘Why is it only pregnant women who get it?’
‘Well,’ he said, settling down to peel some potatoes. ‘Up till 100 years ago, pregnancy was the most dangerous experience in a woman’s life, and the one the highest percentage were likely to die from.’
‘Father of Wisdom,’ I said, and rolled my eyes at him. That’s what I call him when he goes off on one. But he didn’t smile.
‘D’you want to know or don’t you?’
‘I want to know.’
‘Right then. There are all sorts of reasons why pregnancy is dangerous – obviously. The baby can come too early or too late; it may not present head first, the placenta may not come away properly, etc. But once you take away all the physical, mechanical things that can go wrong – there’s something else, which is even more disturbing – because they think it’s what these guys have latched on to.’
‘These guys?’
‘The terrorists. Bio-terrorists, who’ve engineered this virus.’
‘What is it?’
‘Well you know what your immune system is?’
‘Yes, it fights diseases.’
‘Exactly. It knows what you are, and it attacks anything that is not you. Anything foreign in your system, it attacks, in order to defend you. Now spot the problem. When a woman gets pregnant, what’s the problem?’
I sat and puzzled my brain. ‘Is it the baby? Because the baby’s a different person?’
‘Nearly. What’s the baby made of?’
‘Doh. Blood, bones – ’
He shook his head at me. ‘In the very beginning.’
‘An egg.’
‘And?’
‘A sperm.’
‘Thankyou. Which comes from someone else. And for the baby to grow, that sperm needs to survive, and all the cells that grow from the union of the sperm and the egg need to survive. But the woman’s immune system should attack it. Because it’s a foreigner in her body.’
‘OK.’
‘But it doesn’t. In most normal pregnancies, the woman’s immune system does not attack the sperm or developing foetus. Her immune system takes a step back, in order to let the baby grow. And while the woman’s not being defended against the sperm, she’s also not being completely defended against various other nasties that might want to invade her system.’
‘And that’s why she gets MDS?’
‘So they think. The blip in her immune system, which allows her to remain pregnant, seems to make her vulnerable to Maternal Death Syndrome. That’s when it kicks in. It’s a freakish chance – whoever worked it out is either a genius or very lucky.’
‘So when they say it’s full-blown – ’
‘They mean it’s triggered CJD. Prion disease. They’ve married the AIDS virus with CJD, that’s what researchers reckon. So the AIDS gets a hold and makes the woman vulnerable to everything going, and the first thing that’s going is CJD. For which we have no cure in sight – never have had, not back since the days of Mad Cow disease.’
‘A scientist must have done it.’
‘Well it hasn’t happened by accident.’
‘But why?’
‘Power? Religion? Your guess is as good as mine, Jessie.’ He’d cut the potatoes into chips and now he lowered them into the pan, and they hissed and fizzed. The smell of hot oil filled the kitchen. ‘Set the table, love, these are nearly done. And let’s change the record, shall we?’
I shifted my books off the table.
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘how about a perfect crime? You have to use an ostrich feather and a safety pin. I’ll give you three minutes.’ That’s what we used to do. Give each other a clue, or a weapon. We could always make each other laugh. It’s like remembering another life. ‘Come along,’ he said. ‘My nut-brown maid.’
The next thing that happened was that Sal’s aunt in Birmingham died. She was 10 weeks pregnant. Sal’s aunt and uncle already had three children. ‘Mum says we might have Tommy, the little one, to live with us,’ Sal told me.
‘Is your mum very upset?’
She pulled her face.
I felt clumsy and thick and miserable but I wanted to talk about it. ‘Why do you think this is happening?’
‘Doh.’
‘No, I mean, what’s behind it?’
She blew out through her lips. ‘Someone wants the human race extinct.’
‘But why?’
‘How should I know?’
‘I’ve been thinking about it.’
Sal started picking up clothes off her floor and flinging them into a heap in the corner. ‘Go on, wonder-brain.’
‘Maybe they’ve done it for a reason.’
‘Like?’
‘Well they must hate everyone.’
‘Brilliant.’
‘They must – they must be really angry.’
‘What about?’
‘Anything. Wars. Injustice.’
‘This isn’t exactly going to fix anything, is it?’
‘Yes. It’ll make all the bad things end.’
‘Why are they targeting women? Of all the people in the world, why women and their babies? If you want to wipe out bad people why not start with politicians – or paedophiles?’
‘Because – I don’t know.’
‘Why are you thinking about whoever did it? They’re a monster – they’re evil, they should have holes drilled in their brain and needles stuck all over them and boiling wax poured in!’ Sal wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. ‘I don’t know why you care about who did it.’
‘I’m sorry. Shall I make some cocoa?’ Sal likes cocoa, we always used to have it at her house. When we went down to the kitchen Sammy got excited and started barking, and we ended up throwing the ball for him in the garden.
That was one of the first times I argued with Sal. I didn’t really know what I wanted to say but I didn’t just want to talk about how bad the terrorists were and how they should be punished. Yes, of course they were wicked, but it was more I wanted to know why this had been allowed to happen. Or, what it was about now, about us, that made it able to happen? I felt outside all that blah about isn’t it terrible and shocking, as if there was something I knew that no one else did.
Chapter 3
Then came the public information announcement. They trailed it all week on TV and in the papers; it was when they officially stated that MDS was worldwide and everybody had it. They compared it to being HIV positive and said most
of us would live out our lives without ever getting ill; the trigger for it to become deadly was pregnancy. They wanted to reassure us that governments across the world were cooperating in research blah blah blah.
I remember watching it with Mum and Dad and staring at them afterwards. They had the disease. I had it. We all had MDS. It was like knowing you’ve swallowed slow-acting poison. I didn’t want to sit with them so I went up to my room and texted Baz. (How ridiculous. Just writing his name makes me happy. Baz, Baz, Baz. And now there are stupid tears running down my cheeks.)
Back then he was just a friend. We were at primary school together. I went to Sunday School for years because of him – his dad was a vicar and Baz always went, so I tagged along too. Sometimes when you’re talking to him it’s as if he’s still practising piano in his head, you wonder if he’s even heard. Then when he speaks you realise he’s been thoughtfully considering, instead of leaping in and babbling. When we started secondary we both made other friends and avoided each other in school, as if we were embarrassed. But we still used to go round to each other’s houses.
That night he rang me back and said his parents were out, get Sal and some of the others and come round. I didn’t want to get Sal. I felt like talking to him on my own. I had thought he was the only boy I knew who didn’t fancy Sal, but clearly I was wrong. I looked at myself in the mirror and thought how much better my life would be if my legs were longer and my tits were bigger and closer together. I wondered if I should dye my hair blonde, like everyone does, but then I thought how my Dad at least really liked it brown. He called me his nut brown maid, hazel eyes and chestnut hair. And hairy brown caterpillar eyebrows, he forgot to mention that. There was no point in straightening my hair, I looked revolting and who cared?
So Sal and I went round and everyone was in a weird mood. Rosa Davis was there, who Baz’d sort-of gone out with the year before. It hardly counted, he’d dumped her after two weeks. She was pretending to be really drunk. Baz was wearing a black t-shirt with a blue whale on it the exact colour of his eyes. After we’d been there half an hour Sal rang Damien and got him to come round. The two of them smooched together for a while then went off upstairs. I asked Baz where his parents were. His dad was working with the bereaved, there was a residential weekend of counselling and faith, and his mum’d gone too, to help. We laughed about how MDS is great for business – for vicars and undertakers. I asked him if he’d watched the TV announcement and he said ye-es, slowly, as if there was more.
‘What?’ I asked him.
‘I was thinking that maybe we deserve it.’
‘MDS?’
He nodded.
‘Why?’
‘Well something bad was bound to happen sooner or later. People have messed up the world so much – ’
‘You mean, like global warming?’
‘Sure. And running out of oil, and water, and food. The point is, a bad thing was ready to happen. The ground was prepared.’
‘Not by us,’ I said. ‘By our parents. And their parents. They’re the ones who’ve messed things up.’
‘Right. But now this has happened everyone can blame someone else. Instead of being mad at the government for giving scientists money to make hideous weapons, or at themselves for polluting the entire world, they can put all the blame on some unknown monster.’ Baz tapped a little rhythm on his beer bottle, then blew across the top a few times to hear the sound. ‘People always think there’s enough time left to change,’ he said.
‘Well they’re stupid.’
Someone turned up the music and we raided his parents’ booze cupboard, and Kaz passed round a spliff. I remember feeling very cunning when I thought of phoning my parents to say I was staying over at Sal’s. I remember snogging Danny who I don’t even like, and the next thing I remember is sitting propped against the bath feeling sick. Sal told me to put my fingers down my throat and I did puke a bit, but not as much as I needed to. I went down to Baz’s room in the cellar after that. He was there on his own playing his piano, he didn’t take any notice of me. I curled up in the big armchair and tried to doze, while the notes ran on and on like water pouring from his fingertips, and every few minutes I had to open my eyes to stop the room going round. I must have dozed off eventually because when I woke up there was a rug draped over me and Baz had vanished. I felt terrible in the morning of course, and even worse when I went upstairs and found Rosa helping Baz to tidy up. I asked her where she’d slept and she grinned and said his parents’ bed was kingsize. I went home and stayed in my room all day, telling my Mum I had a headache which was true.
But during that evening, before I started feeling ill, when we were all madly dancing and making the world spin around us, I had this fantastic sense of freedom. I thought I could be free of my Mum and Dad and their petty squabbles. I could soar. No-one could say a thing to me, especially not anyone older than me. Because it was them who had messed things up.
The feeling that I had was power; like when I went to help my aunt Mandy at the theatre. As well as making puppets and masks for the children’s theatre company, she did lighting. Sometimes in the holidays she’d let me help and I’d do follow spot. There’s a metal frame like a handle around the big hot spotlight and you twist and tilt it so the beam follows the actor and he’s always standing in a beam of light. You get to know his moves so you can predict where he’s going and move the spot exactly with him. For a while I thought I’d like to have the same job as her, sitting up there in the dark with the lighting desk and all the controls, softly turning the pages of her marked up script. Giving light to the characters who needed it, making the sun shine or darkness fall, making the stage into a firelit cottage or a bright summer morning. Giving them light brings the characters to life. That’s the kind of power I felt I had.
We heard Caitlin was dead, and some people from my class went to her funeral. I didn’t because it seemed a bit hypocritical, I hadn’t even known her that well. Rosa Davis disappeared and there was a rumour that she’d been pregnant too. Nobody was bothered, she’d always been weird. She never had any real friends among the girls, she used to hang around on the edges of groups. I was glad she’d gone.
The next time I went to school I was feeling a bit schizo. Part of me was panicking about my GCSEs, and part of me was going, ‘So what? This stuff is meaningless.’ I was afraid Baz thought I was a drunken idiot. Then he rang and asked if I was interested in a meeting. ‘It’s about what we were talking about the other night,’ he said. ‘How people have fouled up the world.’
I said yes because I thought he was asking me to go with him – then it turned out he had a piano exam in Manchester and his mum was dropping him off after that. I felt stupid, and stupid for feeling stupid. I asked Sal but she didn’t want to come.
‘It’ll be boring,’ she said. ‘It’s one of Baz’s greeny things. Who needs to save the planet now?’ Sal didn’t have space in her head for anything but Damien. They were just at it whenever they got the chance. I ended up going to the meeting on my own.
It was in a grotty area, west end of Ashton, a low redbrick building like a fort with hardly any windows. It smelt of food and sweat inside, and I could hear a babble of voices. There was an office to my left, with its door open – no-one there – and straight ahead a big low-ceilinged room where the voices were coming from. I went to the doorway and saw Baz’s long black hair straight away. He was talking to a boy I didn’t know. There must have been about thirty kids there, but only three other girls. One lad was in a wheelchair. A skinny youth with a plait in his beard – studenty type – faced us all and said, ‘Quiet please.’ He began to mutter about how human beings had the earth in trust and have abused that. The kids in front of me looked at each other then gradually began to whisper. An Asian boy in the front row stood up and asked everyone to listen. People began to call out, ‘Get on with it!’ and ‘Shut up!’ and a slow handclap started up. Beardy Plait soldiered on about politicians being useless, then a pale boy with floppy b
rown hair started shouting at us. He looked like he was about to burst into tears, and everyone suddenly went quiet. ‘This isn’t a joke! The experiments scientists are doing are against nature. Because they attack nature, nature’s attacked us. They mutilate animals – ’
Beardy Plait was asking him not to interrupt, the Asian boy was shouting ‘Wait your turn!’ and a girl in front of me was screaming, really screaming, ‘Women are dying! You want to talk about animals? Women are dying!’ No one was listening to anyone else.
Some people got up and left, and I was happy to see Baz uncurl his skinny self and come round to the end of my row. ‘Want to go?’ he mouthed, and I moved along to join him. There was a man with bristly-short blond hair sitting there. He stood up to let me pass, then quietly asked Baz and me to hang on a minute. He walked to the front of the room and held up his hands, then he clapped them and called out, ‘Friends! Friends!’
It was like at school; Mr Clarke comes in and everything goes quiet. Very calmly he asked us all to move our chairs into a circle. He stood there patiently waiting for us to settle, then he introduced himself – Iain – and started talking about how we need to make our voice heard because young people are the future. The wheelchair boy, Jacob, called out, ‘There isn’t any future!’ and the angry girl, who was Lisa, muttered under her breath but loud enough for everyone to hear, ‘Who asked you anyway?’ Iain glanced at her.
‘I should tell you about myself,’ he said to all of us. ‘I’m an activist. I’ve been living in a solidarity camp opposing a high pressure gas pipeline. Before that I was involved in airport runway protests. I know how these things work, alright? I’m not here to put words in anyone’s mouth.’ There is something about Iain that is very careful. He doesn’t fidget, he’s always still, his voice is calm and steady. He keeps his grey eyes fixed on you, like you would if you were trying to recapture a frightened animal. It’s as if he chooses every word, as if he’s steadily and constantly deciding how he will speak to you, and everything’s under control. It used to almost hypnotise me. Lisa looked down at her hands as if it was nothing to do with her.