The Testament of Jessie Lamb

by Jane Rogers

  ‘OK,’ said Iain. ‘Why don’t we start by going round the circle again each naming one important thing we want to change? Then we can discuss which ones we want to start with.’ A red-faced boy sitting near me pushed his chair back loudly, and said it was just like fucking school. He went out and slammed the door. Iain said, ‘Anyone else?’ and no one moved. He got the flipchart and asked Ahmed to make a list of each person’s change. Lisa said she wanted more money putting into MDS research, and for scientists to be allowed to do any experiments that might help lead to a cure. She was staring at the pale faced animal liberationist as she said it – Nat – and of course he said, all experiments on animals to be stopped immediately. Other people wanted the usual stuff, carbon rationing, no nuclear power, ban arms sales, stop wars, no to GM crops. Jacob when it was his turn said, ‘I can’t believe you people. Haven’t you listened to the news? We’ll be extinct in 70 years and you’re fussing about organic farming?’ Iain asked him what was the change he wanted and he said, ‘I want to show those bastards, man. I want to blow up parliament!’ And someone called out ‘Guy Fawkes!’ and everyone burst out laughing, Jacob included.

  Iain held up his hand now and then to stop some people butting in, but we were all picking up on what each other said. It was about being angry, about seeing how all the old people, parents and politicians and business men had messed up the world. We wanted power. It was us who were going to have to live with the catastrophe they had made. MDS was the worst of it but there was everything else too – wars, floods, famines. People had just carried on pleasing themselves – but now they would have to stop. ‘They can’t tell us what to do anymore,’ said Jacob.

  ‘No,’ said Lisa, ‘they owe us.’ Her little brother Gabriel was sitting next to her. When she spoke he began to cry, and she put her arm around his shoulder and pulled him close, but she went right on talking. ‘They owe us compensation,’ she said. ‘Our mother’s dead. There are thousands and thousands of us. Our mothers are dead, they have to listen to us, they have to give us money.’ There was a shocked silence. I didn’t know anyone my age whose actual mother had died. Mostly it was mothers of younger kids. Then the clamour started up again; that we needed to get ourselves heard. To have meetings, rallies, where masses of kids could listen and decide what they wanted to do. Iain said we should meet again next Friday and he would draw up an agenda.

  Baz and I walked home together. We joked about starting a revolution in Ashton. When I turned off at the end of my road he said, ‘Goodnight Comrade.’ In bed I thought about how it might be interesting to be part of a group that was trying to make things better. But I still quite liked the idea of it all falling to bits and coming to an end. MDS was like a punishment, and I thought people did need punishing – especially old people – and serve them right.

  Chapter 4

  It was seeing my aunt Mandy that began to change my mind. It’s true, what happened to her has been an influence. Influence isn’t the right word: a pressure. Wanting it to be different, and not being able to make it so, was a headache that grew inside me slowly for weeks, like a hot air balloon swelling and swelling until there was no space for anything else at all. I think this was the day it began.

  Mum and I went to tea at Mandy’s. And all her brightly painted walls, and the puppets and masks, looked somehow dim and scruffy. Mum said Mand needed to replace her light bulb, but it wasn’t just the light. The papier mâché on the big table was dried up and stuck to the insides of the bucket, the clay was rock hard, the scraps of fabric lying around were curled up and dusty. It looked as if she hadn’t made anything for ages, maybe even since Clive left. Her black and grey hair was pulled back off her face and twisted round a big wooden knitting needle, and her skin was papery. She looked a bit like a witch. She didn’t really look younger than Mum anymore. Mum never let her grey hairs show, and her skin’s the smooth kind you want to stroke, ‘like a baby’s bottom!’ my Dad used to tease her, when they were in a good mood.

  Mand had an open bottle of wine by her chair and she poured some for Mum and herself. She asked me about school and everything but I could see Mum’s eyes darting round the room looking at the state of it. Then she ran to open the oven, and said the pizzas were more than ready. After we’d eaten and they had moved on to their second bottle of wine, Mum asked her if she’d been down to Penny Meadow. There was an overflow MDS hospital there, where she volunteered.

  ‘I’ve been there every day this week,’ said Mand.

  ‘Aren’t they tailing off now?’

  ‘There aren’t as many. But it’s still heartbreaking – some of them thought they’d escaped – ’

  ‘Don’t they sedate them?’

  ‘Of course. But their relatives – ’

  ‘Joe said there’s no point in people visiting.’

  ‘It helps it to sink in, I suppose. People can’t believe it.’

  ‘Is there anything you can actually do?’

  Mandy shrugged. ‘They come in the main doors on a stretcher and go out the back in a box.’

  Mum glanced at me. She and Dad used to stop talking about stuff like this if they thought I was listening. As if MDS would vanish if we all stuck our heads in the sand. Mand noticed the look, and spoke directly to me. ‘The worst part is the guilt, actually.’

  ‘Because they’re dying and you’re alive?’ I knew she was still sad about her miscarriage.

  ‘There is that – why should innocent people die. But it’s more complicated – ’

  ‘Mand – ’ said my Mum.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, she’s not a child.’

  Mum didn’t say anything.

  ‘I decided to have a baby on my own, by artificial insemination. I had the appointment lined up at the clinic. And then …’

  ‘You heard about MDS?’

  ‘No. It was them that cancelled. They cancelled everyone’s appointments, even before it was on the news.’

  ‘It was obvious something was wrong,’ said my Mum. ‘Thank god they acted quickly.’

  Mandy sat still, staring down at her long thin hands. Her forehead was wrinkled in a strange frown and I realized she was trying not to cry.

  ‘Mandy?’ I went to sit on the arm of her chair and put my arm around her. She pressed her face against my shoulder and I could feel her damp hot breath through my T shirt. Mum sighed and went into the kitchen, I heard her filling the kettle.

  ‘It makes me feel so bad,’ Mandy whispered.

  Mum came back. ‘Why don’t you help out with some older kids instead? Look online, there’s a register of bereaved men looking for help with childcare.’

  Mandy laughed as if it wasn’t funny. ‘There’s one in the newsagents. Local families where the wife … Babysitting, school runs, cooking, there’s a whole grid of stuff you can fill in for. Everything bar wifely sexual services.’

  ‘Wouldn’t helping with children make more sense?’

  ‘How can I go and help look after someone else’s children?’

  ‘You looked after me!’ I butted in. ‘You were brill.’

  She gave me a watery smile. ‘That was then, sweetheart.’ She turned back to Mum. ‘How can I do that, when the woman who had them is dead? And all I can do is envy her? They shouldn’t let me near children.’

  It was Mum’s turn to get up and go to Mand. She knelt by her chair. ‘Come on, love,’ she said. ‘Shush now.’ She tore a new piece off the kitchen roll. ‘Have you got any hidden fags?’

  Mandy laughed in the middle of her crying and said, ‘Bedside cabinet, top drawer.’

  Mum nodded at me to get them. I went into Mandy’s bedroom, that used to be hers and Clive’s. The curtains were drawn and it smelt fusty. I opened the window to let in the evening air. I could hear wood pigeons burbling in the tree behind her house, and the air had that first spring smell of earth and leafiness. I thought about how kind Mandy used to be with me, when I was little. She used to plait my hair in a special way; and she and Mum used to make my dancin
g costumes together and really laugh about them, they were giddy like Sal and me. I wished it could have stayed like that. I wished we could still be happy together.

  I turned back to the bedroom. On the purple wall opposite the window Mandy’d done a mural of two stone windows, copied from a room in the Alhambra in Spain. She and Clive had visited it together. The painted windows were latticed, criss-crossed black like lace with little dabs of pale yellow showing in the gaps, like sunlight. I used to think it was beautiful but when I looked at it today it looked like a prison. I opened the jumbled drawer by her bed. The cigarettes were right on top.

  As I came out of the room I heard the murmur of their voices. They’d shut the door, they were obviously trying not to be heard. I thought they must be talking about me so I crept to the door and listened.

  ‘I think you’re mad,’ Mand was saying.

  ‘Joe doesn’t care if I’m there or not.’

  ‘Yes he does,’ said Mand. ‘You know he does.’

  ‘He talks to Jessie more than he talks to me.’

  ‘So you think it’s alright – ’

  ‘There aren’t exactly any angels in the case, are there?’

  ‘Look, if you were madly in love – ’

  ‘It’s not about being madly in love, it’s about being visible. He looks at me – ’

  ‘Sssh,’ said Mand, so I pushed the door open. They each took a fag and lit up. I cleared the table, wondering about Mum and some other man. Then I realized she had distracted Mandy, and I thought that must be why she’d said it. I felt sadness like a stone in my tummy for Mandy, and for how her flat which used to be my favourite place in the world had turned into a smelly prison.

  Mum drove home slowly, she’d had way too much to drink. I asked her what had happened to Mandy’s theatre group.

  ‘They haven’t got any bookings,’ Mum said. ‘It would be good if she had a project to work on, but no-one’s thinking about children’s plays.’

  ‘What about the other things she does?’ Mum and Dad used to call them her fads. She joined a circus skills group, and an all-women choir. Before that she did guitar lessons and Italian classes. She’d done half an Indian cookery course. After a few weeks she always got interested in something new. She wasn’t that different to Dad, really – back then he was always going off on some new branch of knowledge, reading up on ancient civilisations or learning Esperanto. But Mum took him more seriously. She thought what my Father of Wisdom learned was proper, and Mandy’s just a craze.

  ‘She’s dropped all her fads,’ said Mum. ‘Did you see the state of the kitchen?’

  I agreed that it was bad.

  ‘It’s all or nothing, with Mand. She’s been like that ever since we were kids. When she’s happy she does 20 things at once, and when she’s sad …’

  ‘But how can she be happy, if she’s not allowed to have a baby?’

  ‘That’s a good question, Jess.’

  I wanted there to be an answer. I guess it was the first time I ever took MDS seriously.

  Chapter 5

  At the next meeting Iain brought his laptop and showed us a bunch of websites. They were all about the things people’d said the week before – climate change, animal lib, carbon-rationing. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘So how are we going to be different?’

  Nathan said, ‘It’s through airports that MDS spread. We need to stop planes from taking off.’ Everyone started laughing and suggesting more and more drastic things, but Nat was deadly serious. His face was white and strained, like he had to put a huge effort into making himself speak. ‘We have to do something, that’s the only point of this. It’s not a game.’

  Baz was nodding and drumming on the side of his chair. ‘Everything that’s gone wrong is connected. Scientists think they can do what they want, just muck about with anything.’

  ‘We shouldn’t have to live with adults,’ said Lisa suddenly. ‘We can look after ourselves.’ Everyone stared at her. ‘We’re not stupid. Why should we be kept like – like pets? By them? Why should we let them tell us what to do?’

  As people grasped what she was saying they began to nod.

  ‘They’ve killed our mothers,’ she said. ‘We should have the right to decide what to do for ourselves, not be dictated to by them. They’ve lost their rights. Because they abused them.’

  ‘Where will you live?’ asked Ahmed.

  ‘Anywhere,’ she said. ‘We can take over some houses. And not let any adults in.’

  ‘Like a Wendy house,’ sneered one of the boys, and the others laughed.

  Lisa fired straight back at him. ‘No other animals keep their young for 18 years! Kids of 6 can fend for themselves. Why do we let ourselves be imprisoned by them?’ I wondered about her dad. It must have been awful for him.

  ‘We’ve got more sense than adults,’ piped up Gabe. ‘We don’t start wars!’

  ‘Never mind animal lib,’ said Lisa to Nat. ‘What about kids’ lib? What about us telling them how to run things? We are the victims of every stupid thing they do.’

  ‘We are the best!’ yelled Gabe, and everyone laughed.

  Lisa’s a year younger than me but she’s not afraid of anyone. She has long fuzzy brown hair and a pointed face hidden in the middle of it, and when she gets going her cheeks flush pink and a deep frown-crease forms between her eyes. Her idea about kids living separately was the best one at that meeting. It was easy to feel a bit futile when you saw how many protest groups there already were in the world.

  ‘But every individual can make a difference,’ Iain said. He told us about the trees in China. In the 20th century it had lost nearly all its trees, causing terrible erosion. The Chinese decided that every person must plant three trees a year, and up to now they’ve planted 45 billion! Forests flourish where deserts were. Even if we couldn’t turn back the tide, and wipe out MDS – we could still show. We could show that we weren’t just interested in grabbing as much of the earth’s resources for ourselves, as our parents. We could create less waste. We could stop air travel. We could live together in groups, without the dead weight of adults’ lives pressing down on us. And maybe, if we could get enough people to join us, trying to create a different way of living on the planet, maybe that in itself would start to produce an answer to MDS. A solution we couldn’t even imagine yet.

  I tried to explain this to Dad when he asked why I was so keen on these meetings. Since we don’t know why MDS started, why should he assume that the only way to stop it was through scientific research? Maybe the person or being who invented it was actually trying to make people change their lives?

  ‘And will reward us with a cure if we recycle our bottles and stop using cars? Magical thinking, nut brown one. You’ll be telling me next about the power of prayer.’

  ‘I’m not saying stop the research, I’m just saying why not try living on the planet in a less greedy destructive way?’

  ‘Better not stop the research, or I’ll be out of a job!’

  I said he was typical of his generation – cynical, complacent, couldn’t-care-less. Then he grinned and said true enough, and he was glad I was getting political, everyone needs to change the world when they’re young.

  I wonder if he remembers that now?

  There were meetings twice a week after that, and I went to as many as I could. We called ourselves YOFI – Youth For Independence. A rubbish name, but it took about ten hours even to agree that. We got a constitution (thank you Iain) and we elected calm sensible Mary to be treasurer. We were an official group. New World London set up a website in April and different actions got co-ordinated through that. We joined in the Manchester Rally, at the end of May on a beautiful hot Saturday. Two thousand kids in Piccadilly gardens, and loads of press and TV. Our speaker was Lisa. That was where she made contact with more motherless kids who wanted to live with her and Gabe or to found kids’ centres of their own. She demanded compensation for kids of MDS mothers. The papers loved it, and offers of support poured in, including two building
s that could be used for kids’ centres. Mary said our bank account was swelling nicely.

  Mostly, Mum and Dad seemed to approve of it all. I remember when I went home and told them about the Chinese tree planting (which, of course, my Father of Wisdom knew all about), my Mum actually said, ‘We should do that.’ And one Sunday the three of us went to one of the memorial services at Old Trafford, and Mum and Dad gave money towards the Women’s Forest of Remembrance. Those memorial services were amazing. I’d seen them on telly but to be in the middle of a crowd that size, all singing, all standing in complete silence, all piling our one flower on the flower mountain – it was electrifying. In the car coming home Dad told us about a belief they used to have in Korea, that the souls of women who die in childbirth go to live in trees. And passers-by leave offerings of food and wine on stones under the trees. I like the idea of the women in the trees. I’d much rather think of them there, flickering in the moving leaves, than buried in the dark earth.

  Nat and Baz wanted to campaign against scientists; I had an argument about that with Baz. We were walking to YOFI and he suddenly said, ‘I think we should focus our energies on closing research labs.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because that’s where MDS has come from. From scientists researching more and more complicated, horrible things which nobody needs.’

  ‘They do research to find the cures for diseases!’

  ‘Some do. But most of them are researching microbes or sub-atomic stuff, or genetic mutation. Just for the sake of knowing more – trying to control everything.’

  ‘It’s good to know more.’

  ‘You think? Like splitting the atom? Einstein said if he’d known what they were going to do he would’ve become a shoemaker.’ Baz tapped a triumphant little ta-da! on the letterbox we were passing, and grinned at me. I liked it when he grinned.