Death is a Welcome Guest: Plague Times Trilogy 2

by Louise Welsh

  Belle ignored him. She pulled on one of her plaits and asked Jeb, ‘Do you want me to bring you some books? There are some lying around.’

  ‘Sure.’ Jeb glanced at the sheet again. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Fuck, I miss the Internet,’ Belle said. ‘Do you think there’s any chance someone might get it going?’

  ‘Maybe.’ Magnus shrugged. ‘Who knows?’

  He had seen photographs of giant warehouses in California where servers were housed. Other survivors might be battling to reconnect them with the rest of the world, or the computers may have exploded; a flash of light in a sun-bright desert.

  ‘I still have my mobile.’ Belle slipped an iPhone from the pocket of her jeans. ‘It lost its charge ages ago, but I don’t want to get rid of it. I’ve got photographs stored on it.’ She touched the phone to her lips and put it back in her pocket. ‘I dreamed that they were all alive and living inside my mobile, my family, friends from uni, people I’d known at school, my mum and dad’s neighbours. They all waved to me from the screen, as if they were in a YouTube video. I know it was just a dream, but it felt real.’ Her voice sounded wistful. ‘I heard my mum calling my name. I couldn’t throw it away after that.’

  ‘I have dreams about people I haven’t thought of in years,’ Jeb said. ‘I had one about the guy who used to run the newspaper shop round the corner when I was a kid. I never thought much about him one way or another. He was just an old geezer who was permanently knackered from getting up at 4 a.m. He probably died long before the sweats, but I dreamed about him folding copies of the Daily Mail into a sack, ready for morning delivery.’

  Belle nodded as if she understood. ‘Father Wingate says we’ll get used to it, but no TV, no video games, no Facebook, no Twitter …’

  Magnus said, ‘No cat videos.’

  ‘Sure, some of it was stupid.’ The girl kicked the leg of his chair again. ‘But it was civilisation and none of us knows how it worked.’

  Jeb said, ‘Someone will.’

  ‘Who?’ Her voice was full of scorn. ‘You? Him? All the useful people are dead. My dad was an architect. He knew how to make multi-storey buildings that would keep standing in an earthquake. What did you do?’

  Magnus felt his face growing warm again. ‘I was a comedian.’

  ‘A comedian.’ She shook her head. ‘And you?’ She looked at Jeb.

  ‘I worked with disadvantaged kids.’

  The answer was unexpected and it stalled her.

  ‘I was studying art history.’ Belle gave a small laugh. ‘We don’t know how to keep the lights on, or fix someone’s broken leg properly. We survived the sweats, but there’s no guarantee we’ll see this year out.’

  Jeb’s skin was grey with tiredness and pain, but he seemed to be growing in confidence. He met the girl’s eyes. ‘My leg will mend and we’ll see this year out.’

  ‘And the year after?’

  ‘And the year after.’

  The certainty in his voice seemed to comfort her. Belle gave a sad smile. ‘But there’s nothing to look forward to any more.’

  She was the kind of girl who had been used to new clothes and foreign holidays, to nightclubs and long lunches gossiping about the night before with other girls who looked and talked like her. She had friended, followed, liked, tweeted and smiled for selfies and a part of her had been lost in vanished cyberspace.

  Jeb said, ‘What do they call you?’

  ‘Belle.’

  Magnus had expected Jeb to compliment her on the prettiness of her name, but he merely nodded, as if acknowledging the rightness of it and said, ‘I’m Jeb. It looks like I’m going to be hanging around for a while.’ His smile was small and wry but it was a smile. ‘Will you bring me those books when you have time?’

  ‘Sure.’ Belle’s answering smile lit up her face, as if she had found some small event to look forward to after all.

  Magnus said, ‘I’ll be stopping by for a chat with Jacob and Father Wingate before I go.’

  Jeb turned his prison stare on Magnus. ‘Do what you have to.’

  There was bite in his voice and the girl glanced from one to the other, unsure of what was going on. She kicked Magnus’s chair again. ‘See you in the ballroom.’ She closed the door gently, taking any good feeling with her.

  There was a Bible on the table next to the bed. Jeb picked it up and flung it across the room, but Magnus had seen the move coming and ducked. The Bible splatted against the wall and landed splayed open on the floor. Magnus picked up the book and glanced inside. A sentence was underlined: But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD. He closed it.

  ‘You wouldn’t be doing this if I wasn’t stuck here.’ Jeb pulled the bed sheet back as if he were about to get to his feet. His body was lean and girded by prison muscle.

  The sight of it made Magnus wonder if Jeb was right and whether he would have had the courage to press him had he not been imprisoned by a broken leg. He said, ‘What do you expect me to do? You weren’t locked in there for nothing.’

  ‘Neither were you.’

  ‘I tried to stop a rape. Things got nasty and when the police turned up they thought I was part of it. The whole thing would have been cleared up if it wasn’t for the sweats.’

  Jeb touched his leg as if the pain of it reassured him. ‘You expect me to believe that?’

  ‘It’s the truth.’

  ‘Where’s your proof?’

  ‘I don’t need any proof.’

  Jeb leaned forward, as if he would like to reach out and put his hands around Magnus’s neck. ‘Neither do I.’

  Sticking his nose into other people’s nasty business was what had landed Magnus in jail in the first place. If he had walked away from the man tussling with the woman in the alley he might have caught a flight to Orkney when the sweats had started to take hold. He would be home now and would know, for good or for bad, how things were. Magnus sighed and said, ‘So tell me why you were locked in solitary in the wing reserved for sex offenders?’

  Jeb looked away and for a moment Magnus thought he was going to refuse to tell him, but then Jeb leaned back and propped himself against the headboard. His eyes met Magnus’s.

  ‘It isn’t just sex offenders who are classified as vulnerable prisoners. I was kept in solitary for my own safety. I used to be a policeman.’

  Twenty-Five

  Magnus had never been to a mass before. He sat beside Belle on one of the chairs that had been arranged in a line before the altar in the ballroom, stealing glances at Raisha who had chosen a place at the opposite end of the row, and mulling over Jeb’s revelation. Raisha stared resolutely ahead, her features hidden by the black curtain of her hair. When she and Belle rose to receive the host from Father Wingate, splendid and smiling in his robes, Magnus remained seated, feeling awkward and resenting the trick that had been played on him. There were many miles to travel and a sea to cross before he reached home, but the priest had managed to imprison him indoors in fair weather. It was a hoax to rival transubstantiation.

  The ballroom was large, with picture windows and a parquet floor. It had been a prettified marketplace, where daughters and sons of the rich were paraded and paired off in time to a band. Now the chandeliers that had graced the ceiling were gone. The room’s only decorations were a suffering Christ and the Stations of the Cross. From where he was sitting Magnus could see Jesus being nailed up.

  Will acted as altar boy, still dressed in his gardening clothes, but ringing bells and swinging a censer of sweet-smelling smoke and incense with casual confidence that suggested he was not new to the task. His face was blank and it was impossible to know if the duty brought him comfort, or if he was merely going through the motions to please the old man. Perhaps they were all dolls in Wingate’s playhouse, puppeting through a semblance of a life because their real lives were over.

  Jacob stepped up to deliver the lesson dressed in the same combination of army fatigues and dog collar he had been wearing when they met. He set his Bible on the lectern a
nd rested his fingers lightly on its black cover.

  ‘I had the privilege of serving in Bosnia during their civil war. It was a painful conflict, as all wars are. During one particularly savage battle, my troop and I took shelter in a bombed-out factory. It had manufactured tin boxes. One of the many strange aspects of war is the way inconsequential objects often survive, while other, stronger, more important things are ruined. Metal boxes were scattered everywhere around the factory floor, but the people who worked there were either dead or had fled.

  ‘The glass windows of the factory had been blown out and as we sat there, steeling ourselves for the next round of fighting, a tiny bird swooped in through a window. It flew across the large cathedral-like space of the factory floor and disappeared through a rupture in the opposite wall. I realised then that we are like that bird. We appear on earth for a little while; but of what went before this life or of what follows, we know nothing.’

  Prayers were said for Henry, wherever he might be, but Melody went unmentioned. Magnus wondered if her suicide had put her beyond the reach of the Church, or if she was now ranked among the amorphous dead, too numerous to warrant individual pleading.

  When the service was over, Jacob and Father Wingate stood at the door to the ballroom, shaking hands with each of the small congregation as they left. Raisha was the first to go. Magnus slipped in front of Will, keen to catch her, but Father Wingate took hold of his arm and stayed him in the doorway.

  ‘I know you are eager to leave us, but we have a favour to ask.’

  Magnus caught Jacob’s eye and knew that the soldier was calling in his debt.

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Jacob put a hand on Magnus’s shoulder. ‘We’re not about to ask for anything you’re not equipped to give.’

  The priest’s words reminded Magnus of a phrase his mother had repeated in times of trouble: ‘God never burdens you with more than you can bear.’ He wondered if even she could believe that now.

  Father Wingate led the way out of the ballroom, across the entrance hall and down a flight of stairs into a basement corridor. Upstairs the house retained glimpses of the stately home it had once been, but there had never been an attempt at grandeur down here. Everything was dark and meanly proportioned. Magnus recalled his granny telling him that big houses contained hidden networks of servants’ corridors and stairways, so the gentry would not have to see them going about their work. The servants had been the blood of the house, running along webs of hidden veins.

  Father Wingate opened a door and ushered them into a small sitting room. ‘This used to be the butler’s pantry when I was a boy.’ The old priest’s youthful smile was at odds with his wrinkles. It added mischief to his face and Magnus was reminded of an old Shakespearean actor who had been the stalwart of Sunday dramas before becoming the unlikely star of Hollywood science-fiction blockbusters, wizened in Spandex. The memory prompted another stab of loss. All the multiplexes were empty, the hotdog and popcorn concessions silent and mouldering.

  Jacob had seated himself in a winged armchair, but Father Wingate hovered uncertainly on the edge of the hearthrug, still talking.

  ‘Butlers are often rather magnificent creatures in literature, Jeeves and so on, but I’m afraid ours tended to be on the weaselly side. That’s not very Christian, is it?’ He turned the beam of his smile on Magnus. ‘Ironic that I ended up with this room as an office. The Lord’s way of quelling my ego perhaps.’

  The room was austere. A desk sat at an angle with its back to a small window to avoid whoever was working there getting distracted by the view of refuse bins. A dark-wood bookcase, dreary with devotional hardbacks, stretched across one wall. A painting of a deserted lakeside, done in tobacco hues, hung opposite it. The obligatory crucifix loomed above the fireplace, as if someone had decided to add scorching to the list of Christ’s tortures.

  Magnus said, ‘I would have expected God to delegate room allocations.’

  Father Wingate lowered himself into a high-backed chair that looked like it belonged at a dining table. ‘God is all-powerful.’ The priest’s boyish smile was chastened. ‘But I accept your point. My ego is not yet entirely repressed.’

  ‘Take a pew.’ Jacob nodded at the armchair facing his.

  Magnus glanced at the old priest hunched in the straight-backed chair, still dressed in his robes. The minister in Magnus’s mother’s Kirk had worn the same dark suit to the pulpit for over thirty years. He would be buried in it, if he was buried. Magnus could feel himself beginning to despise the old priest with his frilly frocks and pretensions. The sensation felt too much like giving a fuck. Magnus said, ‘You should have this chair. It looks more comfortable.’

  Father Wingate’s smile flashed again. ‘My ancient spine won’t stand it. Sadly it’s the same when it comes to bedtime. It’s been hard boards for me for some years now. I was never one for mortifying the flesh, but it seems that the flesh has decided it is time to mortify me.’

  There was a trace of bygone BBC in the priest’s accent, like a not quite mended speech impediment that returned at times of stress. The mention of hard boards put Magnus in mind of a coffin and the back of his neck tingled. He took the chair.

  ‘Thanks for all you’ve done for me. You saved our bacon.’ He would make his goodbye to Jeb short. ‘You’ve got the makings of a good community here.’ Magnus realised that he was glad to be leaving. There was something about the place that felt wrong. ‘If I didn’t have my family to think of I’d seriously consider joining you, but I need to be on my way.’

  ‘I’ll get straight to the point.’ Jacob leaned forward, his hands clasped. ‘The sweats have wiped out centuries of culture, learning and technology. Those of us who are left are still in shock, but we don’t have time to dwell on our grief. We need to assure our survival.’

  It was an echo of what Belle had said in the room upstairs and Magnus wondered if he was about to receive a speech Jacob gave all his converts.

  Father Wingate said, ‘The good Lord will—’

  Jacob nodded impatiently. ‘The good Lord has set us a challenge. We need to meet it.’ He turned his stare on Magnus. ‘We want to create a community here—’

  Magnus cut through his words. ‘It’s like I said, I can’t join you …’

  Jacob shook his head. ‘We don’t want to interfere with your search for your family.’ There was a world unsaid, the slim chance of Magnus making it to Orkney, the slimmer possibility of finding his family alive. ‘But we have all been through …’ Jacob paused as if seeking the right words. It was a showman’s gesture, Magnus decided, one priests were probably taught in the seminary immediately before being instructed on how to angle the collection plate to the best advantage. ‘… an incredible trauma …’

  Father Wingate nodded his ugly head. ‘Not since the time of Noah …’

  Magnus remembered the words underlined in the Bible by Jeb’s bed. The old man had been reading about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

  Jacob touched Father Wingate’s wrist lightly and the old man stopped mid-sentence, smiling to show he understood. The soldier said, ‘We both think you need some time for reflection, to strengthen you for the undoubted trials ahead.’

  Magnus was about to say that he had no time for reflection, no need of rest. Jacob anticipated his objections and held up a hand. ‘And we also need your help. We hope that more people will join us. If they do we will need the means to sustain them. This estate is surrounded by agricultural land. There’s a harvest waiting in the fields and livestock about to calve. There aren’t enough of us to do it properly and even if there were, we wouldn’t know how to. Jeb said you were brought up on a farm.’

  Magnus had mentioned the croft one night, sad with memories. He silently cursed Jeb.

  ‘It was only a smallholding. We sold it after my father died. I left home soon after and my mother couldn’t cope with it by herself.’ The selling of the croft had shamed him. He had thought his mother capable of carrying on, had not fathomed the depth
of her debt until it was all but lost to the bank. ‘I haven’t worked on a farm since.’

  ‘But you know about farming.’ Jacob’s voice was earnest. ‘It’s in your blood. You were brought up with it.’

  Magnus shook his head. ‘There are supermarkets stuffed with food for the taking. You don’t need these crops.’

  ‘We have stores of tins and other non-perishables, but the supermarkets are also stuffed with disease. There’s something else.’ Jacob glanced at the old priest. ‘I didn’t share this before because I didn’t see any point in worrying you. The last time Belle and I went to gather supplies we came across the body of a man hanging on a lamppost outside a supermarket. Someone had strung a sign around his neck. It said, Looter.’

  Father Wingate crossed himself. ‘They will come for our stores.’

  The soldier’s voice was firm. ‘We will grow in numbers and be ready for them. But the only way we can survive long term is to become self-sustaining.’

  The old priest leaned forward and took Magnus’s hands in his. ‘This is a chance for you to do something good; surely your family won’t object to your taking a little longer to reach them once they know you helped us to survive.’

  The old man’s hands were dry and horribly alive. Magnus pulled away. He thought of Pete dying on the bunk beneath him in Pentonville and of the inmate he had hit with the fire extinguisher. He was fairly sure he had killed the man. He had done little to make his mother proud in the fifteen years since he left the island. She would want him to do this.

  ‘I’m sorry I can’t …’ He recalled the motorbike’s shredded tyre and said, ‘I’ll be taking the Audi.’

  Jacob’s eyes were fixed on Magnus, too bright a blue for his tired face. ‘Help us bring the harvest in, show us how it’s done and then we’ll let you go on your way.’

  ‘You make it sound like the boy’s a prisoner.’ Father Wingate turned an anxious smile on Magnus. ‘You’re not a prisoner, but we would like your help.’

  Jacob repeated, ‘We need your help.’

  ‘I can’t.’ Magnus rubbed a hand across his face. The crops were beginning to rot in the south, but they ripened later in the north. He could help and still be in time for the Orkney harvest.