by Rob Ewing
We don’t find any insulin. We even don’t find the things a person might have along with insulin, which is a mystery nobody supposes on. What we do find, though, is that the bath is plugged, covered, and full of water – so we have enough to drink, after Elizabeth drops in a sterilising tablet. Plus there’s OK food in the kitchen: although microwave popcorn feels like a joke done by the devil.
For dinner we have tinned ham with pineapple juice, which nobody wants much of. After this, we spend ages trying to puff up the popcorn using a lighter, which only makes it go black, even though the smell starts off true.
We make camp in the living room. When Calum Ian joins us, everybody goes quiet. He puts his rucksack, with the weapons inside, by the room’s fireplace.
The petrol smell of it is there: also strong on his clothes, his jacket.
Darkness comes around us. Duncan opens up his own rucksack, and takes out his portable DVD player and battery pack. He puts on Jungle Book, mainly because Alex doesn’t want to see anything that isn’t a cartoon.
It’s good, though these days Mowgli gets on everyone’s nerves: all he had to do was get through a jungle of mostly friendly animals and he was with his people.
By the end of it Alex sighs and says, ‘You forgot my insulin.’
This is a surprise: mainly because Elizabeth never forgets. She will even wake him up, or go looking for him as far as the other side of the village just so he isn’t even five minutes late.
Then I understand better – when she opens up the tub of injection things and says, ‘Possibly we should save … if I had a better idea from someone … I mean it’s difficult, can’t truly tell …’
‘What?’
‘There’s only one shot left.’
We all gather to look at the pen. She clicks out the glass vial to show us: it’s at the end.
Still, Alex looks easiest of all about it. He tells us to wind up our smiles, then says: ‘I can feel a luckier time coming. Seriously! So you might as well just give. See, my home got saved. It’s got lots of cupboards for keeping medicine in. You’ll see.’
But then he looks less sure, and begins to curl a finger in his hair until it snaps. It sounds sore, but he doesn’t seem to notice: and I just know he’s thinking worst-case: about what – and who – we’ll find when we get there.
Then he says, ‘I made Mum a sandwich with jam. Only she didn’t want it. She said to me don’t come too close. Which is hard when you’re only five.’
Elizabeth takes out her swabs, cleaning stuff. She rubs the skin of his stomach, puts the needle in.
‘Done,’ she says.
Done, which here means: there’s none left.
After a long gap of quiet Calum Ian says: ‘Supposing he can do without it for a bit?’
I expect Elizabeth to disagree – instead, she unties her rucksack and takes out one of her mum and dad’s books, and begins to read with her finger.
‘Might not be serious,’ he whispers, trying to keep out Alex. ‘Mean to say, maybe it’s like when you get your jabs? For measles and stuff. In the old days – before? You need them, but it isn’t like you die if you don’t get them. I bet it’s like that.’
Elizabeth writes in her notebook. She reads and reads with her finger. Then says, ‘Don’t know. I’ve read it all. It’s not like it tells you how things go if you don’t give. It just says you have to give. Maybe that’s clear?’
Her voice has gone loud. Calum Ian mumbles something. Then he takes some of the popcorn from the packet. He puts it in a spoon and uses his lighter to try and burn it bigger.
‘For God’s sake,’ Elizabeth says. ‘You’re stinking of petrol. Can’t you just stop using the lighter in here.’
Calum Ian puts his lighter away. He clicks his torch on and off instead.
Out of the silence of many minutes I hear Elizabeth say, ‘So we’re your guinea pigs. True? You’re letting us go ahead of you on the walk. True?’
‘Not true.’
‘Because you’re scared of what we’ll find. You’re scared about the stuff we haven’t seen yet.’
‘Why didn’t you want to go past your house? It’s on the other island road. Not far. Answer me that.’
‘You think you’re a tough boy – actually you don’t help the group. You’re not a team player.’
‘Cos teamwork is the dreamwork,’ Calum Ian spits, making the last word sound like poison.
Elizabeth answers: ‘Bad-sounding word? You hate it? So you know what I hate? Cowards.’
He bites his lip: an angry bite, the kind that leaves your mouth bleeding after.
‘I’m not a coward,’ he says. ‘That’s never going to be true. Who went inside the gym? Who went into the old man’s house? The same answer. Me.’
‘And who let us walk ahead all day? Holding us up, so we only checked two houses? Same answer.’
‘Who couldn’t help herself for the first month? Who had to be fed with a spoon cos she forgot how to eat? Who heard voices of people that weren’t there? Know what the answer is for that?’
Elizabeth, rather than saying back, just stares at the wall, at the photos of the family who once lived here. Of course it was her. But then she came around, and we need her now.
I shine the torch – at my own face, showing Calum Ian with an ugly look what I think of him.
‘And don’t you think you’re so great,’ he says. ‘Heard you talking to yourself earlier as well.’
When I say that I didn’t, Calum Ian answers that he heard me talking – back at my house this morning.
‘Wasn’t to myself.’
‘Who, then? Tooth fairy? Easter bunny, Santa? Sorry to say, they don’t exist and wouldn’t care if they did.’
‘None of your business.’
‘Who?’
I wait for him to forget about it. But he doesn’t – and instead asks me again and again, until the real answer is too much to keep inside: ‘It was with my mum. All right?’
Calum Ian nearly starts to laugh: then his face changes, becomes more serious. He asks, ‘How do you know it wasn’t your dad?’
I wait until I’m sure he’s being genuine about knowing – that it isn’t just another trap of his – then I say, ‘I know because it was her voice. She comes out with her sayings, that can only be her. And anyway – Mum and Dad didn’t live together. They lived apart. He lived on the mainland.’
‘So they split up. Was it a big fight?’
‘No, come on.’ I’m wanting to sound like it’s easy to speak about. ‘There wasn’t any fight. Mum told me it was because they couldn’t agree on baby names.’
Calum Ian does laugh now. He tries to hold it in, but the sound of this only makes it worse.
‘Shut up!’
‘Gloic – that’s just what she told you!’
Elizabeth turns on her torch. I see her giving Calum Ian a furious stare.
‘My mum never lied,’ I say. ‘It’s true.’
‘Don’t be dull, Gloic. Mums and dads don’t break up over baby names. There has to be other stuff. Y’know, like fights, arguments. Over money, dishes.’
My face feels red hot. Even in the dark it seems like everyone’s looking at me, staring.
‘What about yours? Your dad’s probably dead.’
Calum Ian grabs the torch and shines it right in my face. ‘You fuck off! Bheir mi dhut sgailc! He told us: all we had to do was wait – at home. He said sit tight, collect water, save our food, keep strong, he’d come back. And if it wasn’t for you we’d still be there waiting for him!’
‘You don’t collect food; you steal ours.’
‘You did worse to us. If you hadn’t’ve done it then none of this would’ve happened. You killed the pictures we had of Mum. Of our sister Flora.’
‘Your teeth are brown and stinky.’ Now I try to think of the worst possible thing I could ever say: and knowing how angry he got already about it, this is it: ‘Hope your dad’s dead.’
In the torchlight I see his eyes go
tight.
The next bit happens too quick, or too slow for me to understand all at once.
I see him reaching for his rucksack. Hear the zip of the top of it opening, fast.
Then Elizabeth lunging forward: she calls out, half a scream, half a shout. Her torch is knocked to the floor.
Then she’s crying.
‘You stupid, stupid boy,’ she’s saying. ‘Stupid, stupid. How will we keep going like this?’
Duncan and Alex come to see what happened. Duncan shines his torch on her leg: and we see where the dart he tried to stab me with jabbed into her instead.
A few drops of blood running down.
Calum Ian makes a sad sound – why should he also be the one to cry? Then grabs his rucksack and goes off to sleep in one of the other rooms next door.
I have to go out, get away. Out to the back green, where I throw stones at a wooden fence, imagining Calum Ian’s face being smashed into a thousand tiny pieces.
My breath comes back; my anger goes down. I look around. I recognise Mrs Barron’s house, just up the road. There’s rubbish snagged in her fence, under the washing line where Mum stood, once.
I touch her letter, hidden still in the fold of my jumper. The paper of it warming my stomach.
Mum sits on the fence, five posts along. I try and bounce her up. She doesn’t bounce back.
‘You should’ve been here to stand up for me,’ I say in a huff.
‘Been here loads.’
‘Well you could help, you could help a bit more … Did you post this letter earlier on today?’
‘For me to know.’
I look to the sky, back again. She’s still there.
‘If you’re going to stay, I’ll tell you – today’s news is: Calum Ian is my enemy. He makes weapons. He’s just hurt Elizabeth. Plus he says you and Dad didn’t fall out over any baby names.’
‘You keep a good hand to that letter. It’s the early bird that catches the worm.’
‘Alex is always picking up worms.’
‘Tch, dirty boy.’
‘I’m going to get back at Calum Ian. I know what his weak spot is now. It’s his Dad.’
‘Top marks, mo a ghraidh! But I can’t always be minding you. Stay away from bullies. Never—’
‘—run with knives. You said that the last time, Mum. Can you not say something different this time?’
Mum turns into only air.
I close my eye and catch her in the tear it makes.
Back Bay
To the edge of the dunes, God. Layers of the world.
Sometimes bones stick out: of sheep, rabbits.
Don MacPhail put cars in the sand dunes to stop the island from blowing away.
‘Come see my traffic jam,’ he said to me once, when I met him with Mum on the beach.
He surprised us with steering wheels, engines, seats in sand. His collie dog ran ahead, tail circling the wind.
The island – always moving, he said. Like a giant that hasn’t decided yet where it wants to be.
And now, from up here, I can see most of it.
The hill gets me sweating. The grass gone-yellow, tough so it scratches my legs. Bits of bog-cotton wafting. Then, keeping away, small birds, not seagulls, with wings so thin they might be made of paper.
I look away out to sea. No boats. Just islands, black with shadows on one side, gold the other.
There’s the tanker, or trawler. It’s too square-long to be an island, too brown. I don’t like to look at it for very long in case there’s ghosts on deck.
Then I think I see something that’s not an island.
My arms know it first. My arms are moving, even before my heart or my head catch up. It’s a boat. Not an island, or a wreck, it’s too white. Surely it’s a boat with the sun on it, with the shine of sun coming and going?
I shout, shout until my voice gives up. The paper-wing birds go up, circle me high in the sky.
Then the shine tells me something different.
It’s only a buoy. Guarding the entrance to the bay. And worse: I’ve seen it before. It did the same thing to me before.
Mum, back to this memory: You keep me in the van. You don’t go to the doors as you do your round. There’s other stuff for delivery, but not as many letters as usual. You’re smoking, which you said you’d stopped for ever. It makes the van stink. When I tell you not to you don’t even notice I said anything.
‘Why’d he go?’ I ask.
You don’t hear until I shout, then I have to tell who I’m meaning: Mike, the stand-in postman. He never even made a single delivery. Plus he left all of your laminate cards on the floor of the van, just to keep reminding us about his going away and leaving us.
‘Had family,’ you say.
Then you turn up the radio. As we go around the side of the island to the north end it loses signal. You switch around stations until you get it back.
‘Hush – trying to hear.’
But I wasn’t saying anything, not for ages.
On the ribbon road there’s two lorries from the fish factory. You flash your lights and roll down the window at the passing place, to indicate you want to talk.
‘The tankers get in?’
The driver in the red overalls shakes his head. He talks about diesel, something else I don’t understand. Then you talk about the bank, the ferry, most of it in whispers. When I turn down the radio to hear a bit better you turn it up again and get out of the car.
Some other cars come; you wave them past.
It starts to rain when we’re driving again. You keep turning the radio to get any kind of signal.
‘Will Dad come?’
You light another cigarette with the car’s red glow button. Then say, ‘He’ll be looking after himself.’
‘Why are the ferries cancelled?’
‘It’s temporary.’
‘But there isn’t a storm. Or even any fog.’
‘I know.’
‘Did the ferry engine break like it did last summer?’
‘No.’
‘So why, then?’
You pull the car into a passing place, then turn around to speak to me. Sometimes when it’s raining your face gets dirty from the ink on the letters. Like today.
‘To stop people coming in.’
The shadow of Beinn Tangabhal gets long. It grows like the tongue of a giant over our village.
I climbed over the counter at the post office. In a dusty cupboard I found cartridges of ink.
I cracked a black one open, then used the ink to make my cheeks smudged, like Mum’s.
But with only halfway light in the mirror at home it looked stupid. Like a girl with scars had decided to draw all over her face, pretending she had a beard.
‘Like you’re facing your worst enemy,’ I say to the girl.
She only just beat me to it this time.
Ten days ago
Next morning, for the first time, Alex misses his insulin. We watch as he eats his favourite breakfast – wafer biscuits with jam, dried apricots with juice – to see if he’ll start to become unwell or act strange.
All that happens is he gets fed up of all our staring, and takes his food off to a different room.
Nobody talks about what Calum Ian did with the dart. When it’s time to go he packs quiet and separate from the rest of us, talking only to Duncan and Alex.
His rucksack looks as heavy as it did before; and the smell on it is still strong with petrol.
When we start off on the road again he’s exactly the same as yesterday: holding back, always being last, watching. But now Elizabeth has slowed, too: though for why, to annoy him or to outdo him, I can’t tell.
Alex’s house is a mile up the road. It has a red roof, a garden around. There’s a trampoline blown on its side, jammed under a fence. His old bike is there, but rusted so much that we can’t turn the wheels or the steering.
We spray our perfume-hankies. Alex stays at the gate, nervously chewing his sleeve.
‘P
lease don’t be spraying petrol,’ he says, putting his hands together in prayer in front of Calum Ian.
Calum Ian just waves him away.
The house – has no smell. Calum Ian goes right in, takes off his hanky. He breathes deep. Then he comes back and claps Alex on the back like he’s a competition winner.
‘It’s all right.’
After this, ahead of schedule, Duncan takes out his spray-paint and sprays a gold G on the door.
‘I’m the luckiest kid,’ Alex says.
In the hallway it only smells of coldness. His house reminds me of my old home, with its stairs, shoe rack, curtains. There’s a pair of Highland dancing shoes with red laces on the floor, which Alex says belonged to his big sister, Clare. I forgot or never knew in the first place he had a big sister. He was only ever Alex to me.
The living room has black leather chairs. There’s a scrunched yellow duvet on the longest sofa. On the floor, a mess of plastic aprons, masks, towels. Some of the towels have dirty bits on them, which seems to get Alex ashamed, because he kicks them into a corner.
We get on guard for finding something bad, but Alex says it was like this before: the same mess.
‘The masks were dumb,’ he says. ‘They made my face go hot and my nose itchy.’
‘What – you prefer being dead?’ Duncan asks.
‘Lots of dead people are still wearing them,’ Alex answers.
There’s a pile of Alex’s old DVDs on the floor. He looks through them, though we’ve found most of his favourites in other people’s homes. Elizabeth, meanwhile, looks in the kitchen for injection things. She opens the drawers as softly and as kindly as she can, for respect.
In one drawer, in a plastic box, she finds bandages, antiseptic creams. In another: tissues, candles, kids’ plasters with brave faces on them.
No insulin.
I stay in the living room beside Alex. He stares at the sofa, at the scrunched duvet. Then says, ‘This was where Mum was sick.’ He pulls back the duvet and calls out in surprise. ‘See I just found it, look! There’s her plate with the jam sandwich I made her!’
Duncan goes ahead to look. The sandwich isn’t a sandwich. It’s a shrivelled crisp of green-grey mould.