The Forevers

by Chris Whitaker

  She stopped as a truck rolled through the gates of the Prince house.

  She saw Hugo directing it, met his eye and he waved her over. She tied the dog to the gate.

  ‘You all right?’ he said.

  She nodded.

  ‘Can’t believe you saved her like that.’

  ‘Neither can I,’ Mae said.

  She followed him down the side of the house. Past the glass garage that housed the rare Ferrari, and the swimming pool, lit from beneath, the blue so heavenly Mae fought an urge to dive straight in, sink to the bottom and wait out the next weeks.

  The hole was cavernous now. Hugo lifted a barrier and stepped onto the metal plinth, motioned and she stood beside him.

  He pressed a green button and they gripped the rail tightly as the lift groaned and creaked. It took them down, past packed earth, dense rock torn by mechanical hands. Lights had been punched into the stone and shone out eerily.

  It stopped far below and Mae craned her neck to see sunlight.

  The bunker.

  Steel like a vault.

  A heavy door was propped open. Metal walls, secondary power from generators as tall as Hugo. They walked through the entranceway and it opened out to a sprawl of harried workmen, electricians with clipboards, an architect with measuring tape.

  ‘Looks expensive,’ Mae said.

  ‘I heard my dad talking about trying to offload the chalet in St Moritz.’

  ‘Jesus, no,’ Mae said, a hand to her mouth.

  Ahead they came to a small group. Hugo walked over to his father, who stood with other men but dismissed them when he saw his son.

  ‘You’ve been with Hunter this morning? You weren’t home,’ Jon Prince said.

  ‘Gym.’

  His father nodded at that, then glanced over at Mae. ‘You just bringing girls down here, Hugo? Remember what I said.’ He gripped Hugo’s arm and squeezed it so hard she saw Hugo flinch. And then Jon Prince seemed to remember they weren’t alone. He aimed a tight smile at Mae. ‘I suppose it wouldn’t hurt, there’s no way planning can stop me now.’

  He was taller than his son, perma-tanned, his hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. He pressed a hand to Mae’s lower back, must have felt her tense but didn’t move it.

  He spoke of secondary air, a year’s worth of supplies, the ability to compost, the infrastructure to be self-sufficient.

  ‘I think we’ll stop her. But if we don’t, we’re prepared.’ They looked at the kitchen, pared-back stainless steel, elegant. Survival would not be basic.

  ‘How many people can you fit in here?’ Mae asked.

  ‘It depends on how long you want the air supply to last,’ Jon Prince said. ‘The less inside, the better.’

  ‘What’s that room?’ She pointed.

  ‘That’s for the Ferrari. It’ll likely be the only one left in the world soon enough. Of course there’s others building underground. The Chinese government. The Russians. Basically anyone with the means. But that car. They only built a handful.’

  ‘It won’t save you,’ Mae said, and the men around stopped, Hugo and his father watched her, the noise cut to dead silence. ‘It won’t even buy you time.’

  A moment passed till Jon Prince laughed. And then the other men joined him as Hugo wandered towards the lift.

  As Mae turned to follow, Jon Prince stopped her. ‘You were the one with Hugo when … the Manton girl.’

  Mae nodded.

  Up close he was even bigger, his eyes even colder. Something about the way he looked at her left her fighting a shiver.

  ‘You were friends with her?’

  Mae did not answer.

  ‘But she didn’t say anything beforehand? She didn’t mention any names, people she thought might have upset her?’

  He stood so close Mae took a step backwards and found herself pressed against the steel wall.

  ‘You see, Mae. Sometimes girls your age, they see things that aren’t really there.’

  ‘Pretty sure girls my age see just fine.’

  He looked over at Hugo, something passed between them.

  Maybe Jon Prince could see the look on her face, because he stepped back and smiled.

  Hugo walked her back to the gate.

  ‘Your father,’ Mae said, ‘does he know Abi’s dad?’

  ‘Who do you think is building the bunker?’

  She watched him head back in, then turned and walked the dog along Parade Hill.

  The steady hiss of sprinklers.

  At first she didn’t know if she imagined the music, so beautiful she stopped still and moved towards the kerb.

  It floated from the open window of the pretty cottage behind. Mae sat down on the kerb, closed her eyes and breathed deep. Some nights she could barely breathe. She thought of her parents, wondered if they would be proud of her but knew deep down they would not. She was not a girl to be proud of. In her bag was a small bottle of vodka she had stolen from the supermarket in Newport. The woman at the checkout had been too old and too trusting, like the world was still good, like it had ever been good.

  The music died. She smelled barbecue smoke.

  Mae turned when she heard the gate open and watched as Sally Sweeny heaved a bin out in front of the house.

  ‘Hey,’ she said.

  Sally startled, like she’d never had another kid so close to her home.

  ‘Mae,’ Sally said. ‘Is that Benjy?’

  Sally knelt and stroked the dog.

  ‘I found him.’

  ‘He belongs to my neighbour Mr Leonard. He ran away during the fire at Candice’s house, must’ve got scared. I kind of hoped he wouldn’t come back. Mr Leonard is one of those people that takes out his problems on his dog.’

  ‘That music, what was it?’

  ‘Prelude in E minor. Chopin.’

  ‘It kind of broke my heart.’

  Sally smiled sadly. ‘It’ll do that, Chopin. They played it at his funeral. He requested it.’

  ‘He had his own music played at his funeral. Badass.’

  ‘Who’s your friend?’

  Mae saw Sally’s father at the door.

  The cottage was beautiful. The roof thatched, the grass neat. Mae opened the white gate and walked up the path, the sun hot on her neck.

  There was a cross-stitch.

  BLESS THIS HOUSE.

  The man was short, his blonde hair parted neatly at the side.

  ‘I’m Sally’s stepfather, Oliver. Please come in.’

  Inside, white walls and floral curtains, dark beams crossed the ceiling. She smelled apple pie.

  Sally’s mother appeared in the kitchen doorway and stroked the dog, gave it a bowl of something and watched it curl up. She wore a red apron and a smile that matched her husband’s. ‘I’m Barbara, but everyone calls me Barbie.’

  Looking at her perfectly styled hair and make-up, Mae could believe it.

  She followed them through the kitchen.

  More signs on the walls.

  AS WE FORGIVE THOSE WHO TRESPASS AGAINST US.

  FORGIVENESS IS THE GREATEST GIFT.

  LOVE. COMPASSION. FORGIVENESS. ACCEPTANCE.

  The garden sprawled with flowers, so many Mae was dizzy with the colours. Across was a tall maple tree, a swing hung from the branch. Mae followed Sally over.

  ‘They suspended you then,’ Mae said.

  ‘Totally worth it.’

  Through the bushes she caught sight of the neighbour’s kids, running through a sprinkler and laughing.

  ‘Are you here to convert me, Mae?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Sally smiled, squinting into the sun. ‘This swing, it’s been here since I was small. You ever wish you didn’t have to grow up?’

  ‘It was a race when we were young, to be the first to go with a boy, drink, smoke. Now we want time to stop.’

  ‘Maybe it has. Maybe it stopped ten years ago. I heard about Sullivan Reed.’

  ‘Yeah. You think it was him?’

  ‘It doesn’t look goo
d.’

  Barbie and Oliver beckoned them over.

  They’d already laid a place at the table for Mae. She couldn’t say no. Oliver stood by the barbecue, flipping burgers.

  Mae sat beside Sally and watched her parents. It was orchestrated, a picture-perfect snapshot of family life.

  Barbie brought out sides, steaming potatoes, salad and buns. She touched her husband’s back each time she passed him. Mae wondered about intimacy, how it could endure, how they could be so content. It was like they hadn’t heard, or didn’t want to know.

  Pork chops. Sausages and burgers. Chicken legs and great hunks of steak.

  Sally filled her plate before her parents had poured the wine. Started eating before Barbie bowed her head to say grace.

  Mae sat and watched as Sally methodically worked her way through the food. Ketchup spilled down her chin, mayonnaise streaked down one cheek.

  Sally’s parents exchanged looks but neither said anything.

  Barbie tucked a napkin into her top and nibbled on a rib.

  ‘I saw the posters in town,’ Barbie said. ‘This dance then …’ Sally shovelled in a mouthful of potato. Barbie waited, watching, patient.

  ‘Have you got a date yet, Sally?’ Oliver said.

  Sally ignored him, reached for a third burger and washed it down with a glass of Coke.

  ‘The school will still let her go, despite what she did to that poor girl’s hair,’ Barbie said.

  ‘The boys at school are arseholes,’ Mae said.

  Sally aimed a grateful smile at her.

  ‘You’re still beautiful,’ Barbie said.

  Sally worked on her third pork chop.

  ‘Maybe go easy on the food, we have company.’

  ‘Doesn’t bother me,’ Mae said.

  Barbie stared at her daughter. ‘Gluttony is a sin.’

  Sally stared right back as she bit a sausage in half.

  ‘I worry about you. You know she can barely sit behind the piano now. Has to stretch herself. Such talent and she’s intent on wasting it.’

  Mae glanced at Sally, who looked about ready for Selena to hit.

  ‘You know I used to wake her at four, seven days a week. People think it’s a gift, to be able to play piano like that, to sing like Theodore does. But it’s earned, Mae.’

  Mae watched Barbie as she spoke. She looked delicate but Mae could sense a toughness beneath. And Oliver, for his part, he sat there mute, like the conversation wasn’t happening.

  ‘Everyone’s talking about Sullivan Reed,’ Barbie said, shaking her head. ‘Did you know him, Mae? So sad what these kids are doing now. The drugs. All the alcohol. I heard about what happens at the beach at night. I’m just glad my Sally has her head screwed on right. Of course she’s too large to be invited out now.’

  ‘Actually,’ Mae said. ‘That’s why I came over. I was going to ask Sally to come over to my house to watch a movie tonight.’

  ‘Oh,’ Barbie said. ‘That would be nice, right, Sally? Sally doesn’t like to go out in the evening. Not even to church. Those kids by the beach, they can be so cruel if you’re …’ she dropped her voice to a whisper, ‘a bit fat.’

  Sally stared through her mother.

  ‘You know, I bought a painting from Sullivan Reed once,’ Barbie said.

  ‘The beach scene?’ Oliver said. ‘I did wonder where that had come from. But then I wondered about everything when I came home. I barely recognised Sally. But I know she’s still in there.’

  ‘Sullivan was actually very sweet. He was over the moon when I bought it.’

  ‘He works on commission,’ Sally said, her mouth full of coleslaw.

  ‘No. I think he was excited for the artist. It’s rare for people to care that much now. For someone to want to help someone else.’

  ‘He’s a murderer,’ Mae said.

  Barbie took it in her stride. ‘Their sins and lawless acts will be forgotten. He’s a merciful God, Mae.’

  Sally put down her food. ‘You know what else God said? An eye for an eye.’

  27

  They walked slow.

  Mae stopped off to let the dog into the old house, watched it climb the stairs and take its place at the foot of her sister’s bed. She imagined Stella’s face when she woke, her smile reaching Mae’s.

  Every now and then Sally stopped and caught her breath. Tourists stood outside the Rose and Crown and drank. Mae caught snippets of conversation, talk of their last weeks, talk of Selena. One man raised a glass to the sky, spilled most of the contents down his arm and then began to cry. His wife slipped an arm around him.

  ‘Goddam summer people,’ Sally said.

  ‘Your stepfather, he said something about not recognising the house when he came back. Was he a leaver?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Sally said. ‘But he came back. I didn’t expect to see him again, but then we got a letter out of the blue, and then another.’

  ‘People make mistakes.’

  ‘Forgiveness takes strength. But it also takes strength to hold a grudge. I mean really hold it, so tight you worry it’ll break you.’

  As they rounded the curve they saw the beach fire.

  This time there were twenty of them.

  And that night the new Forevers of West told their stories. They passed around a bottle of champagne, stolen from Hannah Lewis’s parents. It was a special bottle they were saving for their twentieth wedding anniversary. Mae treated it with the appropriate respect.

  ‘Jesus, pass it on,’ Betty said as Mae chugged.

  Most stories had been told before, but no one interrupted, no one dared take anything from the person holding the bottle. There were no rules, you could speak about anything, but for those fleeting moments you had an audience that listened, you got to feel like you had a voice in a deafening world.

  Mehmet Ceyhan took the bottle and he told them how he cheated in his exams, and that his parents found out but they kept it from the school.

  Becky Lane stood, so far from the fire all Mae could see was the dark of her hair, and she slurred and held the bottle like a microphone.

  ‘When Selena comes, in that last moment, I’m going to go up to my bedroom and I’m going to get off and I’m going to have the world’s biggest orgasm because the world … it’ll be small, right?’

  There was laughter, applause and cheers as she curtsied and passed the bottle along.

  Sail lay beside her.

  She hadn’t seen him arrive, he just drifted across the beach and settled with the group.

  Matilda stood. She said some nights she was so afraid of dying she crept across the hallway and climbed into bed with her parents. On another day she might have been mocked, but everyone there understood that fear too well.

  It came back to Mae and she did not stand, instead drank some more and passed it to Sail.

  ‘I don’t like public speaking,’ he said, a slight slur.

  ‘Say anything,’ came a voice from the darkness.

  Mae saw the profile of his face beneath the moonlight.

  ‘My Selena story.’

  A couple of people encouraged. Everyone liked to hear these stories, it took them back to when it began, and maybe to before.

  ‘I had a sister.’

  Mae saw a slight shake in his hand.

  ‘Alice, and she was five and she was sick. I mean, the kind of sick you don’t get better from. We knew that when she was born. We knew she’d die. They said that, everyone said that she’d die like that would somehow lessen her life. I couldn’t breathe. I thought I’d die too.’

  Silence fell then, the kind Mae had not heard at the beach before.

  ‘My parents … we went to a hospital in Switzerland because that’s where this doctor was, but even he couldn’t do anything. Money, it gets you so far, but there’s always things that you can’t …’

  He glanced down at Mae.

  ‘So, she died in the morning. And I sat at the hospital, in one of those rooms where there’s a TV and games. They wouldn’t l
et me see her, they said she was gone. But we stayed there the whole day. And when we were driving back I saw cars pulled over to the side of the road, some just stopped dead. And they were broadcasting it on every radio station. People climbed out and stood on the motorway and stared at the sky.’

  He drank again. ‘When I look back now, there’s something beautiful in that. But I don’t know exactly why. The uniformity … everyone reduced to human. Kind of like we were Forevers.

  ‘My parents don’t have photos of her. Or rather they have them, they just don’t put them out on display. And they don’t like to talk about her. I think they died that day, I think we all did. My house is a mausoleum, we exist in our own tombs. Sometimes we pass each other by, we might nod or smile, but we’re nothing to each other. We’re nothing without Alice.’

  He held their attention with his words.

  ‘I have photos on my laptop, every picture I could find, I scanned them and sometimes when I hear about Selena, I go to my bedroom and I check in with Alice. And I feel better. You know, live or die, whatever happens. If there’s somewhere, after, then I’ll see her again, and if not then I’ll just go through whatever she went through. If it’s dark, that’s all right. Alice went there, and I’d follow her into hell.’

  He passed the bottle.

  Mae got to her feet and ran from them, from the Forevers calling her back, from the boy who’d finally let her see the part of his life that broke him.

  He ran after her.

  Up the curve of Ocean Drive, the mansions nothing now, the cars and the pools.

  She slowed a little when they reached his house. And then finally she turned to face him.

  ‘The laptop I took.’

  He smiled like it was nothing.

  The pain in her stomach, catching her out, the dryness in her throat. Sometimes she laboured under the illusion she was a good person dealt a losing hand. She knew right from wrong, her heart was in the right place. But right then, standing before him, beneath the harsh lights of his world, she saw herself.

  He tried to say something, maybe he read her, the look on her face.

  ‘I’m nothing good,’ she said.

  He tried to take her hand but she slipped it from him. ‘I need to go and you need to stay here,’ she said. ‘And that’s how it will be.’