by Rob Ewing
‘And we were afraid!’ laughs Calum Ian, with a rise in his voice for relief, that it was maybe only dogs, after all.
But these dogs are strange.
It gets in me that they’ve been painted. They have blue stripes along their sides.
One of them has a blue face. Blue-tipped whiskers.
‘So they tried to drink paint,’ Calum Ian says, though he doesn’t sound convinced by himself.
It’s when I look at Elizabeth to see what she thinks about the dogs that I notice she’s looking in a different direction: with her eyes fixed, just staring.
When I follow where her eyes are going, I see.
A little girl.
We stand to show ourselves and the girl runs away.
Seeing an animal that isn’t a dog or cat looks so strange that nobody can even react.
But then Elizabeth does – ‘Wait!’ she shouts, but the girl nips between two hedges and is gone.
We close in around on both sides – and she jumps out again, running fast.
It’s hard to follow her, she’s so quick: running around the back of the circle of houses, crawling behind and between bins, rubbish-piles, gas canisters.
‘She went in at the end!’
The end-house has a load of rubbish in its front garden. Black bags, tarpaulin, held with fishing rope, lines all twisted in an untidy heap. The garden smells. I see lots of shit on the grass, which I hope is from dogs.
Alex and Duncan are posted to the back door. Me and Elizabeth and Calum Ian stay around the front.
By the doorstep there’s a shivery cat, with five rag-doll kittens taking milk. It’s lying on a pair of jeans inside an old tyre. The cat meows, hisses at us.
We ring the doorbell. It’s not working.
There’s a strong smell when we open the door. The smell is of many things: rotten food, damp, shit, pee, dogs. It’s hard to tell if there’s a dead person’s smell there too. Calum Ian says there is. Elizabeth says there isn’t.
It’s cold. Straight ahead: a kitchen with one fluttering torn curtain. We see Alex and Duncan out the back, through the window. They don’t see us inside.
All the shelves are pulled out. The kitchen floor has a broken centre. Mostly it’s a mess: dried-dirty plates, tins, crisp packets. There are hundreds of small empty cans of something called Indian Tonic Water. Then up on the kitchen table, lots and lots of tins of dog food.
There’s teddies, sitting on the seats around the table. Then at the middle of the table there’s a framed picture – of a man, a lady, a boy, with plastic flowers beside it.
Calum Ian points at the boy in the picture with the sharp edge of his knife.
‘Knew him,’ he says. ‘His name was Rory.’
There’s a camping stove on the floor. It’s gone black. Maybe it went on fire? The wall beside is also black, but that’s different, the black is from spots of mould.
We go through the kitchen. In the hallway Calum Ian shushes us – then Elizabeth calls, ‘Hullo? We want to help. To become friends.’ Then: ‘Are you very hungry?’
There’s the smallest sound.
‘Door – there.’
We open the door. It creaks loud.
The room’s dark. The curtains are hanging off their rails. The mess here is worse than in the kitchen: hills and forests of rubbish. A part of the corner of the ceiling has the paper peeling.
Our eyes get used to the dark. There’s a stick-tree in one corner. As my eyes get stronger I see that it’s a Christmas tree gone down to bare branches.
In another corner there’s a nest. Only it’s not for a bird, it’s for a person. The nest is made of duvets, dressing gowns, sleeping bags, clothes, and even, I think, a big blue flag. It all looks filthy. On the floor around are thousands of sweet wrappers and bits of silver foil.
There’s a face: very dirty, with white eyes. Watching us, from a hole in the side of the nest.
Calum Ian doesn’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. Elizabeth gets us to kneel down, to get ourselves small. Then she holds out her hand. The dirty face goes further into the nest. Then reappears.
‘You’re all right,’ Elizabeth says. ‘You’re all right to be feeling curious. What’s your name?’
The dirty face just stares.
‘Mine’s Elizabeth,’ says Elizabeth, and she gives the rest of our names. ‘Is anybody with you? Maybe your mum or dad? It would be a very big help if you could tell us if there’s adults. We definitely need to find adults.’
The dirty face just looks.
‘You on our side?’ Calum Ian demands. ‘You should be, and now you’ve got to talk, so give us your name.’
The dirty face disappears. Elizabeth puts her hand up to Calum Ian’s mouth. Slowly the face comes back.
From deep in the nest she’s found something.
She throws it. Calum Ian falls away, annoyed, or scared.
But it’s nothing. It’s only small: a key fob.
Elizabeth picks it up. The key fob is pink, blue, with a smiling cartoon girl’s face. Mairi, it says underneath.
Now we remember her. She did have a big brother called Rory. Both of them had dark hair, dark eyes. She liked to show off, I remember, by dancing in the playground.
‘Come on to hell,’ Calum Ian says. ‘Rory’s little sister never looked like that.’
We look at Mairi. She’s more of a dirty broken toy than a girl, thinner than the thinnest of us, which is Alex or Duncan. I think I remember her being in P2. If it isn’t Mairi, then it’s hard to imagine who else she could be.
‘Where’s your brother?’ Calum Ian asks, then he spells out the letters, first in words then using his fingers to write in the air. ‘BROTHER? Tha? Yes? Did he get sent AWAY? Did he get put in the Community Centre?’
Mairi stares at us like we’ve come from space.
‘Where is he? A bheil Gàidhlig agaibh? Or English? A bheil an t-acras ort?’
After a bit she points at the door we’ve come through.
‘Outside?’
She shakes her head.
‘A-staigh? In the house?’
She nods.
‘Up the stair?’
She shakes her head.
‘Downstairs? That other room next door?’
She nods.
Next door is also dark. It has the worst smell. It’s another living room: only instead of a coffee table in the middle there’s a mound. Elizabeth opens the curtains. We see that the mound is a pile of clothes and cushions. The mound is topped with fairylights all in a spiral.
At the very top, on a pink pillow, there’s a face drawn on paper. It has shells for eyes, tinsel for hair.
‘Like our Last Adult,’ says Elizabeth, of the mound.
Around the edges are things which Elizabeth calls mementos, though they’re really only toys. There’s an Action Man and a green teddy-snake. There’s some food: cornflakes on a plate. The flakes look mouldy.
Mairi has now come out of her nest. She’s in the hall, still too timid to come close to us. Calum Ian stands the same distance apart from her, nervous as well.
‘Your brother under there?’ he asks. ‘You bury him?’
Mairi doesn’t seem to hear. But then she nods.
‘When did he die?’
Mairi doesn’t nod or shake her head.
‘Same time as everybody else? Later, then? You lived together for a while? He survived beside you?’
Mairi nods – a tiny nod, but definite.
‘He died after. What happened?’
At first I think she doesn’t understand. Then she points to her mouth.
‘He was hungry. No, he was sick. OK. What got him to be sick? Did he get toothache? His mouth? Did he eat something that made him sick?’
Mairi doesn’t look sure. Instead she points to the mound, and keeps pointing until we get to the bit that’s warm in the warmer-colder game.
‘The box?’
She nods very strongly.
The thing she means
is a shoebox.
We open it, and inside there’s purple silk material and Christmas decorations. Also, a drawing – of Mairi, in a dress, with individual fingers drawn like flowers.
Her brother is in the drawing as well. He’s standing alongside, but with his eyes closed.
Also in the box is a mountain-picture calendar. The days gone past are marked with crosses. Except that the last day crossed goes all the way back to March 5th.
‘Can’t have died then. That’s not possible.’
Mairi moves her lips without talking. The hushed word she’s saying is: Yes.
‘That was three months ago … that’s too long. You can’t have survived on your own for that long.’
Mairi looks like she doesn’t care if we believe or not.
It’s strange to see another home owned by kids. Mairi’s home is far, far messier than ours. And also darker – they didn’t collect batteries for light-ups. Also, there’s no radios, no room full of clocks. It looks like they didn’t have as good routines.
It looks like they didn’t have so many good ideas.
Duncan comes in, and looks shocked by Mairi, in fact he can’t stop looking. Alex must still be outside.
‘She doesn’t talk English, or Gaelic,’ says Calum Ian.
Mairi has finished three packets of our crisps. She goes out of the room then comes back with something from her nest. It’s a naked doll.
She creeps in behind Elizabeth’s feet on the floor and curls up to stroke the doll.
‘She stinks,’ Duncan says.
She doesn’t hear the rudeness of it: but instead, still lying on the floor, she puts a hand forward and begins to play with the lace of Elizabeth’s shoe.
Elizabeth tries to lift her up, but Mairi won’t allow it. She fast-crawls back to the door and watches us from there. Her eyes dart to see us all.
With her patient voice Elizabeth says, ‘You have to come home with us Mairi, because we’ve got a better place. You’ll be safe and sound there. We’ve got toys. We’ve got films. Have you a favourite?’
Outside, Alex is noisily counting. Mairi stares and stares until we get uneasy about her.
‘This could be a trap,’ Calum Ian says.
Elizabeth gives him a look which means Shut up.
‘Listen,’ she says, ‘We’re in a bit of a hurry. It can be a big help, in a group. You’ll get teamwork. It’s crucial to be helping together. It’ll be your best ever decision.’
Mairi starts to creep back. She’s keen to play with Elizabeth’s school badges. She points at the one that says BANKER, then points like she wants it.
Elizabeth gives her both badges.
‘You haven’t seen Alex yet,’ she says, with a hurry to her voice. ‘I’ll tell you one big issue, Mairi. He needs medicine. If he doesn’t get any he’ll become sick. So for that reason we’ve got to go back. It’s our mission.’
Elizabeth pins the badges to Mairi’s T-shirt. All the smudged dirt makes the gold and green shine.
Elizabeth takes out a wet wipe from her rucksack and begins to wipe clean Mairi’s cheeks.
‘So we start to see you.’
Mairi looks very solemn. Her face comes in like a window being cleaned. Her skin’s the colour of clouds. Or even whiter – it’s the colour of snow.
Elizabeth’s hand stops moving. Then Calum Ian makes a mad sound I never wanted to hear.
Elizabeth quickly cleans all the way down to Mairi’s neck and ears.
With her mouth sagging she says – ’Show me your stomach.’
Mairi shakes her head, so Calum Ian gets behind her and grabs her arms. She kicks, but she’s too small.
He pulls up her jumper. After this he turns her around to look at her back.
‘She’s got none. None at all.’
I don’t know why, but Calum Ian pushes us away from Mairi. And for once Elizabeth doesn’t disagree.
When we get back outside Alex is writing with dirt on the path. His face goes amazed like Duncan’s did when Mairi appears. She keeps hiding at the door, as if Alex was the bad person we were hiding from her.
It’s Elizabeth’s face I don’t understand. She looks like something awful happened – which can’t be true.
Alex holds out his hand, to shake. Mairi doesn’t reach for it. ‘You want water?’ he asks. When he holds up our bottle of red sterilised Calum Ian stops him from getting too close.
‘Don’t think about touching her,’ he says.
I ask what’s wrong. I ask it ten times or more and then I get angry because they don’t want to tell and it makes me feel like a dumb kid who doesn’t understand.
In the end Calum Ian says, ‘It should be obvious. Just look at her face.’
I look at Mairi’s face. It’s mostly hopeful, like she wants to be friendly. Plus it’s more clean. I mention both.
‘And she doesn’t have scars.’
I see that he’s right: she has true skin like from an old photo or DVD: not broken around her nose and cheeks like all of us.
‘So she got lucky,’ Duncan says.
‘But none of us got lucky. We all got ill.’
‘Then she’s still lucky.’
‘Not if we give it to her. Then we make her sick. Then she might die.’
Everybody now looks at Elizabeth: all at once, as if we need her to tell that it couldn’t happen.
She just looks away to the big hill, the turbine.
Mairi begins to touch her own face: a sign that she understands what’s being said. Maybe she’s only waiting for her best chance to speak?
‘But none of us are ill now,’ Alex points out. ‘Apart from Duncan’s face, but that got better. Apart from the insulin with me. Maybe that makes it OK to be friendly?’
‘How do you know we’re not still infected? How do you know we can’t make her sick? All the adults who got sick died. All the other kids as well.’
I try to think of another person with no scars. I can’t think of even one. All of the babies we saw, all of the dead adults. Every person in every house.
It doesn’t feel right. I hate to think I still have some sickness in me. I want it gone. I want us to be healthy.
We end up standing in two groups: her and us. We throw food, we throw water. Duncan makes a line of stones on the road for not crossing.
Yet the longer we wait, the more it gives us of worry: even more when Calum Ian takes out his petrolgun and begins to talk about hiding again.
‘Something’s not right here.’ He curls his finger on the trigger of the gun. ‘How can she be the only lucky kid? I think she’s not talking because she’s not telling.’ He sprays one spot of petrol on the road, looking deliberately at Elizabeth, as if challenging her to stop him.
‘I vote we leave her,’ he says.
Elizabeth rubs and rubs at the sides of her head.
‘Can’t do that.’
‘We could feed her, put down some food. Aye? Then we come back later and check she didn’t get ill.’
‘No!’
‘So you bloody take her. But make sure she keeps herself apart. Maybe fifty feet? Till we know it’s safe. I’m taking Duncan back with me.’
‘When will we know? When can any of us know for sure that it’s safe?’
‘I don’t know – you’re the expert! You’re the expert-girl, doctor’s girl! An e dotair a th’annad? You’re the one who knows it all! The one whose mam and dad knew so much they couldn’t even save themselves!’
When he shouts this Mairi sags her head. I want to put the dirt back on her cheeks so no one knows the truth.
He goes to the edge of the stones, stares at Mairi, then begins to rearrange his rucksack, for going.
When a paint-swirled dog comes to make friends with him he kicks it.
We watch him stuff Duncan’s rucksack with the blankets we carried. Then he throws clothes belonging to me and Alex onto the ground between us.
I pick up my clothes, pack them safe beside Mum’s letter.
And w
e watch the MacNeil brothers walk away.
Mairi comes nearer. She looks worried, as if we’ll kick her like Calum Ian already kicked the dog.
Elizabeth puts a hand up to say Stop; but the hand trembles like it got too heavy to hold.
‘Don’t come past there,’ she says. ‘We need to think about you, all right? Decide if you’re safe.’
Mairi stares and stares at the stones, like the only thing she wants now is to be part of the team.
Back Bay
How does an alone kid keep alive? I think this when I think of Mairi. For starters, she kept her count of days. For second, she knew the idea of having friends: dolls to stand in for real people. She even painted the dogs, maybe because that was like giving them clothes, and clothes equals human.
But still: alone, she forgot how to talk. Which is why I’ve started to say aloud all the adverts and films I could ever remember.
It gave us trouble, in the end, Mairi not talking.
The other question: how does an alone kid keep safe? She was the best at that. Now I want to shake her hand and tell her how well she did.
Today, I made it a theme for the ‘Plans and Activities’ jotter I started—
ACTIONS
I have no one else to blame for my actions. There’s only me who did it. Everyone else can’t be blamed.
MESS
It’s the same with mess. Try to blame Alex? But my mind knows that can’t be true.
Now that I’m at risk, I could never hit anything. Even the snails. Or flies. They are like spiders, only more innocent.
STAYING SAFE
Be careful with the edges of chairs. You can hurt yourself on the top of the edge. DON’T swing.
Glass is bad. Plastic cups don’t break. If you get glass in your foot then infection gets in.
Chew until there’s no hard bits. You never want to choke, the dogs can’t help.
Whether I am the last of the island kind, or last of the world kind, it’s the same for safety.
FEAR
Fear of heights keeps you safe. Use it.
Fear of the dark is because there used to be wolves. Dogs should be safer.
Monsters: remember you were scared of a monster in the plughole? Never existed. So the new monsters don’t exist, either.
Fear of being alone is