I’d spent long enough playing at being a detective and looking at photos for one day, however, so it was the top shelf I turned to. It usually is, because that’s where I keep my real treasures. None of the volumes on that shelf are properly bound, and almost without exception they’re dog-eared and tattered, written in hand on water-stained or moldy, yellowed pages. The state of the paper and the legibility of the handwriting make them difficult to read, but more often than not my patience is rewarded by insights that bring the past to life in a way even a teacher as good as Annie MacDougall can’t hope to do. There’s so much ground to cover in a classroom or lecture hall that the past is inevitably portrayed in grand sweeps, but to me it’s the everyday details that hold the key to understanding. Study the big picture, memorize the key dates, and you’ll become knowledgeable; but read the everyday stories of ordinary people and you’ll gain understanding. Books about the rise and fall of empires, the clash of civilizations and the lives of the men who led them usually leave me cold, but the accounts of ordinary people rarely fail to engage and surprise me. Pick up a book on ancient Egypt or the conquest of Mexico and you’ve got a rough idea what to expect. Pick up a diary of someone you’ve never heard of before, and I can guarantee somewhere in its pages will be things that shock you and things that put a smile on your face—and, the chances are, you’ll find expressions of loneliness and love which stay with you long after you’ve forgotten the accounts of events which changed the course of history. More often than not with a diary you start feeling you know the writer and their friends. You want to know whether they passed their degree exams and what happened when they proposed to their fiancée; if the pet rabbit survived its bout of fly-strike, and whether Grand-dad got over his heart attack. You build up a picture of how they looked from what they wrote. I’ve often found myself returning to a house I took a diary from, looking for a photo of the person who wrote in its pages. Sometimes the diarist turns out to be uncannily like I imagined; sometimes they’re hysterically different. Whatever, as I look at the photo I feel like I know the person in it. If it’s a man I wonder if we could have become friends. If it’s a woman I wonder if we might have been something more.
I reached for the last unread diary in my collection, not realizing it was to be one of the most affecting I’d ever come across. It was written in a notebook with a light brown cardboard cover that had RECYCLED PAPER printed on it. There was no name on the cover, just a matchstick figure drawn in green pencil.
The first thing I noticed when I opened the jotter was the tiny writing, telling me before I saw the date that I was looking at a diary from the last of the Old Days. Paper was so expensive by then that people crammed as many words as possible onto every page.
Sure enough, the date written in block capitals above the opening entry was APRIL 11, 2016. The entry beneath it read:
I’d expected the worst, but it still came as a shock. ‘Carbon lung’ is what the doctor called it. He said I have a year, maybe a lot less, maybe a little more if I’m lucky. He actually said that word: lucky.
He asked what I did for a living, and when I told him I’m a cycle courier, biking documents and parcels through the traffic jams, he just nodded as if to say ‘I guessed you did something like that.’
It’s so unfair. I’m only twenty-nine years old and it looks like I’ll never get to be thirty. I’ll never get to have a family, to experience the wonder of holding a baby and knowing I helped give it life. I’ll never get to watch a son or daughter growing up, feel the thrill you must get from seeing things you recognize to have come from you and your partner, and the bigger thrill of seeing things that are wholly the child’s own; of watching a unique personality take shape. Until now I never realized how magical any of that is, or how much I wanted to experience it for myself.
The next few words were smudged, and I wondered if a teardrop or two had blurred the ink. I think they said, There are a whole lot of things I never realized until now.
That took me to the end of the page. When I turned over to the next one, it said:
APRIL 12
I cried myself to sleep last night. I wouldn’t have believed a grown man could do that. I must have used up all my self-pity, as well as all my tears, because when I woke up this morning my eyes were dry and I felt angry at God rather than sorry for myself. What’s happening to me would be bad enough if I’d done something I deserve to be punished for, but it’s the opposite. It’s happened because I refused to be one of the selfish scumbags driving around polluting the planet. It’s because I’ve chosen to take the ‘healthy’ option and walk and cycle all my life that this horrible, terrifying thing is happening to me. Where’s the justice in that, God? If there is a god in heaven he can’t be worth worshipping. Now, when I need to believe in God more than ever, I find it harder than ever to believe in Him. They say He works in mysterious ways. Well, I think I’ve solved the mystery. I think there is no god. I think man invented God and not the other way around; that we’re products of chance and circumstance and we’re kidding ourselves if we believe we’re part of some grand design.
They talk about hard-earned truths; well, truths don’t come any harder-earned than this one. I’m paying for it with my life.
APRIL 13
I’m meeting Sara today. It’s the last thing I feel like doing, but it was arranged before I got the bad news. I was going to cancel, but I have to break things off with her sometime, and the sooner the better. For her and for me. The longer I spend with her, the more I’ll grow to love her and the more unbearable this’ll be.
I was thinking about it all last night, and the best thing seems to be to split up with her without disclosing the real reason why. Telling her would only ruin her life for the next year, or however long I have left, and I love her way too much to want to do that. Besides, I’m struggling badly enough as it is to cope with my own feelings. I don’t think I could cope with hers as well. When she asks me why I want to break up, I’ll say I don’t love her enough for things to work out between us. It’s going to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, but I have to believe it’s a case of being cruel to be kind, that the short-term hurt will be for the best in the long run. Sara will be able to get on with her life, look for someone else, not be suspended in limbo with her life on hold until mine finally ebbs away.
APRIL 14
I should have known it wouldn’t be that simple. When I told Sara I wanted to break up, and that I didn’t love her enough for us to have a future together, she started crying. And then, before I knew it, I was crying, too. Even through her tears and mine—or maybe because of my tears—she must have been able to see I was lying, and that I loved her as much as one person can love another.
The writing blurred again at this point. However this time it wasn’t due to tears having fallen on the page, but to tears forming in my eyes, because I knew the love he was speaking of and how much it hurt to lose it.
I had to wipe my eyes with the back of my hand before moving on.
My heart broke, and before I knew it I was telling Sara all the things I promised myself I wouldn’t say—from what was happening to me, to what I felt for her. She wanted to stand by me, like I knew she would. She wanted to get married tomorrow, but I wouldn’t agree. I love her far too much to have her life ruined as well as my own. I feel sick with myself for telling her, for being so weak and selfish. I feel…
The writing tailed off, but I knew how the diarist felt about the selfishness thing. I knew exactly how he felt.
I turned to the next page.
APRIL 15
No matter what way I look at things, all the future holds for me is heartbreak. So there’s only one thing to do. All that’s left to decide is how to do it. I lay awake all night thinking of a hundred different ways. The problem is, I’m scared of every one.
APRIL 17
I’ve settled on a mix of painkillers and gin. I don’t have the guts to slit my wrists or jump out of a window or do anything
else that’s so obviously going to kill me. I mean, taking pills and a drink, those are things you do every day, so it shouldn’t be impossible to make myself do them one more time: to take a whole packet of pills rather than a single tablet, a bottle of gin rather than a glass.
Now that’s decided, all that’s left is to write a note. I’ve been trying all afternoon and half the night but…
I wish I could be profound or touching, or at least witty and brave, really check-out in style. But I’ve never felt less clever or funny or brave in my life. I’m just hoping I can capture a tiny fraction of what I feel for Sara.
Or perhaps that would only make things worse for her.
Perhaps it would be better if I didn’t leave a note at all.
APRIL 18
I’d intended making this my last day on Earth, but things didn’t exactly go according to plan. I should be dead by now. But, instead of losing my life, I’ve lost a tooth and gained a reason to live. At least for one more day. I guess that’s not a bad bargain unless you’re fussy about your smile. I also guess it takes a bit of explaining.
We had one of those monsoon style cloudbursts that are becoming spookily commonplace. I waited for the rain to go off before heading out to the shops for painkillers and gin. How crazy is that: intending to kill myself, but not wanting to go out in the rain and get wet. Anyway, I was on my way back from the shops with everything I needed to get the job done when this jerk in an SUV went through a puddle and soaked me from head to foot. I felt a wave of water not just going over the top of my trainers but over the collar of my coat. Again, it shouldn’t really have bothered me. I mean, it’s not like I was going to have to wash or even dry the clothes, or worry about catching a chill from getting soaked. I might have let it pass if the muddy water hadn’t ruined the pad I bought for writing my letter to Sara.
Whatever, all the anger building up inside me, that I hadn’t been able to release because I’d nothing to vent it on, found a target in the SUV. Without stopping to think what I was doing I reached in my carrier bag, brought out the bottle of gin, and hurled it at the SUV. The back window didn’t shatter but the bottle did, and the jerk of a driver slammed on the brakes and got rear-ended. He must have known what happened because, after flinging open his door, he didn’t go for the driver who’d shunted him. He came after me.
He punched me in the face before I realized what he was going to do, then turned and ran back to his SUV and drove off and left me there with a bleeding nose and a loose tooth.
Okay, that’s not exactly true. The bit about the bleeding nose and the loose tooth is kosher, but not the bit about him running away. He stood there for long enough to give me a chance for a square go, but I was too stunned (AKA scared). He was bigger and heavier than me, and I knew he’d beat me to a pulp in a fight. That shouldn’t have bothered me, given the circumstances, but it did.
As I watched him drive off I was disgusted with myself for not having made a fight of it, and I was filled with rage at him and his SUV. I made up my mind there and then that I wasn’t leaving this world until I’d exacted a measure of revenge. If I couldn’t beat him up, I could at least do some damage to his SUV: I’d got a good look at his number plate as he drove off, and I could use it to find out where he lived.
By the time I got back home I’d replaced the broken bottle of gin with a can of spray paint, and the thoughts of suicide notes with notions of exacting sweet revenge on the black SUV. I was so pumped up I didn’t bother changing out of my puddle-soaked clothes. I ran the license number through a search engine on my PC, and used the damp pad of paper I’d bought for my farewell note to write down the name that went with the license, and the address that went with the name.
I worked out a dozen ways to get there. I thought about what to wear to be as inconspicuous as possible, what weapons to take and what to carry them in. I felt like a general planning a campaign, like a soldier on the eve of battle. I had something to live for, even if it was just getting my own back in a petty feud.
I could hardly wait for night to fall. I found myself looking forward to the future, or at least the next little part of it, rather than dreading it.
I felt like a ninja as I made my way through the city, sticking to the shadows as I approached the street where SUV Man lived. When I got there his pride and joy was parked outside a garage that presumably housed his wife’s planet-wrecker. I started getting ambitious, wondering if the garage was locked and if I could get in and do some damage to whatever was parked in there, too. Then I laughed at how I was getting carried away. I can’t remember the last time I’d laughed. I hadn’t thought I would ever laugh again.
There was a pub within sight of his house. I grabbed a stool at a counter by the window and had myself some tall, cold beers, drinking them slowly, savoring the taste in a way I’d never done before. I noticed a whole lot of stuff I’d never noticed before, like the beautiful golden color of the beer. And, every so often, I looked up from my glass to the house across the street, watching the lights go out one by one until there was only an upstairs light left on. The barman called last orders, and I went for a walk through a nearby park and looked up at the stars, and noticed things about them I’d never noticed before, like how many there are.
The next time I approached the house the upstairs light was off. The drive was covered in tar rather than gravel, so I didn’t have to worry about making any crunching sounds as I walked up it. I wanted to slash his tires but that would probably have set off an alarm so instead I took out my spray can, gave it a shake, and got to work. I started on the windscreen with your basic, unimaginative swirls, hurrying to do as much damage as possible before the car alarm went off and the bedroom light came on.
I relaxed a bit when there were no alarm bells or lights, and put more thought into what I was doing. By the time I got to his door panels I’d graduated to writing some words that made it plain exactly what his once shiny SUV was doing to the planet.
I stood back to admire my handiwork, then took off into the
night, running and laughing like a carefree schoolboy. I hit half a dozen ‘targets of opportunity’ on the way, leaving each of them unfit to drive.
Somehow I know I’ll sleep like a baby tonight, and when I wake up in the morning I’m going to feel like a new man.
I was ready for sleep myself, but couldn’t put the diary down. I turned to the next page.
APRIL 19
I was right on both counts.
The stress of the last few days and the excitement of last night left me totally drained, and I was sound asleep within minutes of my head hitting the pillow. Before I slept, though, I heard something that set me thinking, that made me wonder if there isn’t a God after all, and if there’s maybe a reason for the stuff that’s happened to me. I’d switched on the radio after switching off the light, and the BBC World Service news came on. I like it because they don’t operate on the same sliding scale of values that some other stations do: you know, one Brit or Yank equals half a dozen continental Europeans equals several hundred Rwandans or Filipinos. Anyway, before I fell asleep I heard this thing about how climate change has affected some of the poorest countries in the world; about how the people who’ve contributed least to global warming are suffering the most. The ones who’ve so little to begin with are losing everything they have, including the chance to make a new start. I drifted off to sleep realizing this is about more than me. I realized it’s not myself I should be killing, it’s the people who’ve caused all this, who’ve poisoned me and the planet. Well, I shouldn’t be killing them, or then I’d be as bad as they are, but I should be doing things that’ll make them think, or at least make it difficult for them to keep on living their selfish lives and screwing up the planet and other people in the process. I should be doing things like spraying paint on their cars so they can’t drive them any more.
Suddenly I have a reason to live as long as I can, something to do that’s worth doing. It’s not difficult to believe tha
t getting splashed by the puddle and punched in the face was fate, that there’s some sort of grand design at work after all, and I have a part to play in it. Even if I can only take a handful of cars off the road for a week or so at a time, it all helps. It’s indescribably fantastic to have something to think about that takes my mind off thinking about my own problems; to feel like I can do something that matters to the world with what’s left of my life.
Anyway, I truly feel like a man on a mission. I’ve made up a list of every shop that might sell spray paint, and I’m going to buy a can or two in each one—I don’t want to buy too many in any single shop in case I attract the wrong sort of attention. Don’t get me wrong, I want to attract attention, but to The Cause I’ve set out to further, not to myself.
Then, once darkness falls, I’ll get to work again.
I blinked away my sleep and flicked over to the next page, wrinkling my nostrils at the musty smell which was carried on the draught from the mildewed paper.
APRIL 20
A good night’s work—14 confirmed kills and one partial (I saw headlights approaching in the distance and had to scarper before I’d fully ‘decommissioned’ car #15).
APRIL 21
There was good news and bad this morning. I was in a shop and the owner had the radio tuned to the local station. The news was on, and at the end of it there was a story about how the police are hunting ‘the Green Man’. It seems as though I’ve been elevated to superhero status. I mean, the Green Man sounds like something out of a comic book or graphic novel, doesn’t it. It’s spooky to be hunted, but at the same time it’s pretty damn cool to be a wanted man, not to mention a superhero. It’s right what they say—truth really is stranger than fiction. If anyone had told me this was how my life was going to turn out, I’d never have believed them in a million years.
Tomorrow’s World Page 10