‘We can’t trust anyone, all right?’
‘I’m the cynic of the family, remember. The survivor. It’s the other one we have to worry about.’
His sister doesn’t laugh.
The Lord is with thee, though mighty man of valour.
87
Mouse grazes stillness. The wind outside slicks a piece of paper around a man’s leg. The breeze seems very far away. He flops on the mattress and spreads his limbs into a starfish. Writes.
A bed finally to myself. Lonely, and I wasn’t expecting that.
Standing now, back against the door. So small, unsure, lost. He turns. He slips the key into the lock, takes it out, holds it to his lips. Not wanting to go out by himself, must. All briared up; bound by terror of what’s gone wrong and why aren’t they back; bound by terror of himself. He wailed to you once he wasn’t good at being alive and how come Tidge was? ‘Come on,’ he now revs himself up, ‘for God’s sake just go.’
If you want others to be happy, practise compassion. If you want to be happy, practise compassion.
88
Mouse locks the door from the outside and just as he slips the key into his pocket his two siblings bolt down the corridor. Safe. Gloriously in one piece and no blood, nothing broken; everything, miraculously, all right. You’re cracked like an egg into runniness and relief. The three of them burst into the room. Your two eldest are holding hands, won’t let go, can’t, as if it’s impossible to stop touching now that contact’s been made and their faces are incredulous because they’ve made it, they’re safe.
‘You little monkey’ Soli attacks Tidge with tickles on the bed. ‘You absolute little monkey. You are so dead, mate.’
He was starving. Of course. And he had a plan. He’d set out early because there’d be breakfast trays then and possibly, even, jam toast. He’d go to the top floor because the people up there would be richer and the women more afraid of getting fat, so more things would be left. Tidge let himself out of the room with its fidgety sky. Didn’t tell his sister because she’d just say no in her mother voice and didn’t tell his brother because nothing impresses him much. He climbed the fire stairs to a door with a six. A peek was promising. It felt like a very expensive shop that hardly anyone ever goes into. Someone almost saw him, a security guard, but he’d forgotten to place a bet so he told his friend the other guard who wanted a bet too and down they both went in the lift. And out Tidge stepped. His feet sank into carpet like it wanted to eat them but there was a tray at the end of the corridor and just as Tidge was plucking a raspberry from a pancake a voice behind him yelled out. He jumped. Spun, with a thudding heart.
It was a boy. A boy! A potential friend.
‘How did you get here?’
Tidge couldn’t speak, think.
‘Do … you … understand?’
‘Yes,’ your boy squeaked. ‘I got lost.’
‘Are you a guest?’
‘Uh-huh,’ he said. Then quickly asked a pressing question: ‘Marvel or D.C. heroes?’
‘D.C., what do you expect?’
‘Snap! Me too. Any comics?’
‘Ah, like, yeah. And maybe, even, a game or two.’
Tidge sucked in his breath in ecstasy. ‘Can I play?’
The boy sighed.
And in that adult response Tidge got the feeling the new person had rarely had a friend in his life. It was something about the shirt buttoned up to the neck and the careful face and the eyes shifting away from him, not looking at him straight. He willed him to say yes.
‘Okay,’ the boy said finally, warily. ‘But we’ll have to be quick. My dad doesn’t allow visitors.’
Your son laughed and slung his arm over the shoulders of his brand-new best mate. He never sees the colour of skin, never hears an accent, never notices difference; to him it’s always just a kid, a new playmate. And he noted as they walked down the corridor that this new boy walked differently. Without fear. Like he belonged.
So your little man had a go at walking like that. And back in their room gleefully demonstrated.
Just the art of being kind is all the sad world needs.
89
But Soli. Furious with herself because she’d been entrusted with her brothers’ safety and it was all going pear-shaped; taking enormous risks to get everything back right. She poked her head into restaurants and listened in at doors. Finally, one floor left, the sixth. On the handle of its fire door was a ribbon of shirt. She held it to her lips shaking with relief. Heard, suddenly, her brother’s shriek. Her heart jolted, she couldn’t read it, joy or alarm? She tried the door where it came from. Locked. She’d have to knock. Agony. This was becoming too hard, her parents were expecting too much; she hesitated, closed her eyes, breathed deep: then, as if plunging into a very cold pool, held her breath and rapped. Attagirl.
A careful boy. Reddening. Soli also. Her wayward brother barging between them.
‘We’ve been playing computer games — D.C. heroes — and I won, sis, I won!
‘Well, just.’
‘Who is this?’ A barely suppressed explosion in Soli’s voice.
‘Pin. My friend. Isn’t that a cool name? And he’s got—’
‘Where are your mum and dad, Pin?’
‘My father’s out.’
‘Well, I think we’ll keep this little play date to ourselves. And you, young man’ — she looked severely at her brother — ‘it’s time we went.’
‘But we’re right in the middle of—’
‘Right now.’
A tense stand-off. Your son wasn’t budging. He’d found a new mate, he wasn’t going to give him up; he’d found a new life, a possible way out.
‘Mum’s downstairs. Waiting.’
Tidge gasped. He believed it, for a second, it was in his face.
Soli’s heart hurt to see it. But she had him, in that moment he was caught. She grabbed his hand and yanked.
By rousing himself, by thoughtfulness, by self-discipline, the wise man can make for himself an island which no flood can overwhelm.
90
Tidge is now sitting next to his sister, their backs against the cupboard. They’re singing ‘Let’s go fly a kite, up to the highest heights’. Mouse is inside, writing.
Good grief. My brother is impersonating my sister. The two of them are singing together. My WORST nightmare. It has become reality. I have to get out.
Soli’s conducting using B’s key held high in the air. Mouse eventually puts down his notebook and joins them to steer them into tune. So. Here they all are. Singing away like there’s no tomorrow, singing away as if to lock laughter and light forever in their hearts. Because once again they made it, they’re safe and they’re becoming good at it. Mouse gives up eventually and lets the two of them veer off course.
A sharp knock.
‘Hello? Anyone in there?’
The new boy’s followed them. He pokes his head around the door. Steps inside.
They’re found out. Your blood runs cold. You feel disembodied, floating; the door is unlocked; in the relief of being safe everyone forgot, or they were going to do it next or they’ve become careless or whatever, they’re found out. Caught. Tidge and Soli leap up, glee wiped. Mouse stays in the cupboard, trapped.
‘Hey, guys, what’s up?’ the boy says mildly.
Silence, wire-taut. You will your daughter to do the talking. Will your son to stay quiet.
‘We found this place,’ Soli says carefully, ‘we were just … mucking about.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Like a grown-up is already underneath.
‘All right,’ Soli says. Her frantic thinking. ‘We’re hiding.’ She’s walking across thin ice; any moment it could break, like a pistol shot; you shut your eyes, will her safe; will this boy from the other side gone, gone from their tender lives. ‘Our parents are away. We got in from the street. If we’re turned in’ — her voice goes very small — ‘I don’t know what will happen to us.’ Silence. The ice is creaking, bowing, Mouse pumps
his hands in terror, little sickles of blood appear in his palms, from his nails, tiny scythes.
‘Where are you from?’ The voice cold. You do not like him, cannot detect warmth.
‘The north,’ Soli says precisely as Tidge leaps in with ‘The west.’
A new silence. Grubby and wrong.
‘Are you street kids?’
No one answers.
‘Your parents have been disappeared, haven’t they?’
Mouse rams a hand at his mouth to stop a sob because it’s been said, finally, after so many nights of wondering and not daring to say, to speculate, talk it out because it can’t be that, anything but, and now the tears come; no, no, he mouths and nooooo Tidge yells with all the force of his brother’s heart. Because if you’ve been disappeared you’re never coming back, they’re alone, and they’ll never know what happened and their lives will be spent trying to work it out and they couldn’t bear it, they need a compass of certainty to go on with this.
‘They’re away. On business. For a month.’ Soli speaks calmly but you sense the will in her to even out her voice. ‘We ran away. From our uncle. He was looking after us. We don’t like him. We thought a hotel might be a good place to get food. And be … safe.’ She says that word soft like it is lit by a candle and reaches across to her little brother and draws him in tight. ‘That’s all we want.’
‘Hrumph,’ the intruder says as if he doesn’t believe any of it, one bit.
In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful.
91
‘Maybe we should keep him,’ Tidge says, moving towards the door with the key now in his hand. ‘You know, like a hostage.’
‘You can’t,’ Mouse responds quick from the cupboard.
‘Who’s that?’ The boy spins.
‘It creates more problems than it solves.’ Mouse steps out, holding up a hand in warning to his brother. ‘Hi. Good to meet you.’ Warily Pin allows his palm to be shaken. Mouse encloses the stranger’s fingers warmly, hugely, in a double clasp, just like his father often does in greeting.
Pin looks at one boy then the other and back again.
‘Twins,’ Mouse explains.
‘So you get two of us for the price of one,’ Tidge says.
‘Believe me, I’m more of a bargain than he is,’ Mouse adds drily.
A smile. Not a laugh but a smile. It’s a start. A fragile one. But everyone’s heart is thudding. Everyone’s.
They strive after violence on the earth.
92
He leans against the wall with his arms crossed. A sizzly new presence in their midst. And it’s in your blood to despise them. Fear them. Dismiss them. Want them gone from your land and your life. You do not like their difference, their smell, language, pushiness, how they treat their women, how they disregard life. And now the banality of what he could so easily do. To the things most precious to you.
He takes in the scattered clothes, the empty trolley, the doll and the book. Looking and looking, trying to work your kids out, what they’re doing in this place. The three of them breathe tremulous, light, waiting for his response.
‘Hell,’ he declares finally. Like it’s the best lawn for football in the street.
‘We know.’ Tidge smiles in enormous relief.
‘So, like, what are you going to do next?’
Your children are blank.
‘We want to go home,’ Mouse says finally. ‘We’re going to make it, too, you know.’ A firm, adult voice that stands you tall.
But Soli. Standing by the door. Shaking. You can tell by her hands, they won’t be still. You know her. She can’t see any good in this and blames herself, she should have kept a tighter rein on those slippery boys; a runaway locomotive has been set in motion here and she’s not sure now it can ever be stopped; nothing’s under control and at any moment B might come back and be dragged into this mess and Mum and Dad too; they could all be compromised and everything broken, smashed. Because they disobeyed B. They went out. Everything sprang from that.
Tidge has no idea. He puts his arm around his new friend and coaxes him to the curtains, for a swing. ‘Come on.’ He laughs. ‘You first!’
This great pull in us to connect.
93
As soon as Pin’s gone Mouse grabs the doll from the sill and holds him to his chest and blurts defensively in one breath, ‘Dad says we should always try to hold out a hand, to anyone, no matter what, to increase the amount of kindness in the world and it’s always worth the effort and it may, actually, help, all right?’ He gulps a breath. ‘So don’t get cross.’
A long quiet. Soli says okay. She sits down carefully on the bed as if she’s very old and tired and her body won’t work properly any more. She says she’d like Tidge to tell her everything he knows about this new friend. ‘Everything,’ and there is viciousness in that word. Tidge sits beside her. Begins.
Right. Well. It couldn’t be much worse.
Pin’s father is cemented into the heart of the government. He works for the Interior Office.
‘What’s that?’ Tidge asks.
‘Jails, detention, stuff like that,’ Soli replies. ‘The Official Truth Commission. The Department for Historical Clarification. All those places where people get taken away and never come back.’
Mouse shrinks into a curl on the bed. Tidge talks on. Pin is now staying in this place for protection because his old house is a target and his father has a complicated past, he was a doctor but now he’s not.
Ah yes, yes, you know of him. A man obsessed by violence, an extreme but not uncommon example of clinicide. Doctors who kill. God. Could it be any worse? One of that esteemed coterie of medical practitioners involved in their country’s murderous pasts. His historical colleagues: Jean-Paul Marat, Mengele, Papa Doc Duvalier, Radovan Karadzic and, cult notwithstanding, Che Guevara. And what, exactly, attracted them to the profession in the first place? The power over life or death? This man, early on, was notoriously involved in the slaughter of twelve men, in a single room, with sledgehammers. And what, precisely, is the thought behind that? You whimper as your son talks, you whimper, cannot stop.
Pin’s been kidnapped before, abduction’s now rampant in your country and he’s a bargaining chip and he spends all his time quarantined as a consequence. ‘He’s like this hidden-away prince,’ Tidge says, eyes wide. His father has an intractable hatred of people like us; Pin, apparently, does not. And you know what? He could be a way out!’ He says excitedly.
Mouse shoots bolt upright. His response is vicious and fast. ‘Yes. We want our home and our parents back, but with his help? I don’t think so. We can never trust someone like that. The grown-up must have leaked into him. He must have been stained by the hate.’
But Tidge ambles on. Pin has promised to keep the secret of their hiding place so long as he can muck around with them, whenever he wants; he’s worked it out, he’s telling his guards he’s off for a swim, every day, and he’s so excited about having brand-new people, kids, at last, in his life.
‘Those people kill people like us,’ Mouse says.
‘But we kill them,’ Tidge responds, matter-of-fact. ‘We might as well trust him, dude, it’s in his face. It’s a face that’s incapable of—’
‘Stop,’ Mouse cries, covering his ears. ‘Stop, you idiot, stop.’
Between us and you there is a great gulf fixed.
94
‘You’re not thinking.’ Mouse, later, shouting to his brother. Stabbing his temples with his index fingers. ‘If we’re taken away this is all your fault, all right? You didn’t have to play those stupid super-hero games. And remember, Tidge, you’re a boy, just like me. And we’re not going to be in a group that’s walking down the street. They’ll be separating us. They’ll be taking us away to a field that trembles for three days and then stops. You. And me. And you know what? You’ll have brought it all on yourself. We can all blame you for that, no one else. Thanks, mate. Thanks a lot.’ Mouse stops, clamping his hand at his mouth at t
he ugliness that’s come out. Too late.
His brother’s as white as flour, running to the bathroom, slamming the door shut like he’s never slammed a door in his life.
A vibrating stillness.
The leaving of the light.
He shall return no more to his house, neither shall his place know him any more.
95
So. Here they are. The three of them, found out. Your youngest child curled by the bathroom door, horrified at the too-quick words that blurted from his mouth. His brother inside, too quiet. Your daughter in a tight zigzag on the bed. Mouse can’t stop staring at the door, silently beseeching his brother to emerge out. He’s never been like this. God knows what’s ahead. There’s no map any more, their future can’t be read.
Dad said we have to remember that the family is the basic unit of society. NOT a person acting alone. The mantra, the mantra. ‘That we’re stronger TOGETHER than apart.’ And we have to do WHATEVER IT TAKES to keep together. He looked at me specially when he said this. WHY can’t I keep my mouth shut? I NEVER learn. Okay. It’s official. I should never have been born. I should not be on this planet mucking everything up. I’m NO USE. All right?
Achingly you want to break through the membrane of their world; achingly you want to scoop them up, your three lone chicks, tumbled, tumbled from their nest.
He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it.
The Book of Rapture Page 10