Well, we laughed and laughed. And then suddenly we weren’t laughing any more and I knew that, for all the talks we have when we console each other with the notion our lack of luck is for the best because of the way the world is going, we both hoped with all our hearts the thunder and lightning might be some sort of sign—
I was about to turn to the next page when I was aware Paula had joined me at the table. Like me, she was caught up in those elegantly written words on the yellowed paper. Numbers read the printed word much more quickly than Names do, but they struggle with handwriting, so I asked, “I’m not going too fast for you, am I?”
She shook her head distractedly, reading the last few lines. A tear formed in the corner of her eye and rolled down her cheek. I brushed it away gently with the back of a finger, and when she looked at me I smiled.
She seemed bewildered by my expression, so I explained it to her: “You’re beginning to imagine, Paula, and to wonder.”
And then she smiled, like a little girl, and did something I’d never seen a Number do. She blushed.
I think we both felt we were getting closer in more than a physical sense, and knew that whatever was happening between us was a fragile thing that might shatter if we tried to express it in words, or if we even looked at each other. So, instead, we looked at the yellowed pages of the diary and let someone else’s words bring us together; a stranger who’d probably died before we were born.
DECEMBER 27
We ended up spending most of the day in bed. I’d like to say it was a purely romantic thing, but there was more to it than that—another power cut because of the storm. It was still windy outside, and too dark inside to read without straining your eyes, so there wasn’t much to do except… Well, you know.
At first it was all very cozy—spending the day in bed, eating by candlelight. But it’s the sort of thing that grows old quite quickly, and you can’t help wishing you could flick a switch and the lights and videoscreen and computer would come on and you’d get your life back. It’s all a bit spooky. I mean, you only used to get storms like this once every five or ten years, but now it seems there’s never more than a few weeks between them.
We agreed to limit ourselves to one candle because they’re getting so hard to come by. I’m writing by its flickering flame, watching the wax melt. There’s not much left, so I better stop now.
Paula coughed beside me, and at the same time a catch at the back of my throat told me my own filtermask was spent. I spat it out in my hand and put on another one while Paula did the same. She got up to check on the weather. My filter had softened enough to let me speak by the time she came back. “Any sign of it clearing?” I asked.
She shook her head. She didn’t look all that sorry, even though we were in danger of using up our filtermasks before we got back to the community.
The next few entries in the diary dealt with mundane things—friends coming over to dinner, a New Year party—so I flicked through the pages until something caught my attention. It was under the date JANUARY 15:
Mike came home late again and in a truly foul mood. He’d forgotten his phone, so I’d no way of contacting him to find out what had happened. I have to confess I was torn between being worried and wondering if he’s seeing someone else.
When he finally arrived I felt ashamed of myself for thinking that, because there was no faking his temper and frustration. It turned out he’d been running short of petrol and, knowing what the queues are like, he’d been putting off going for more. But by tonight he couldn’t put it off any longer. He waited for over an hour in the queue and then, when he was within three cars of the pump, the station ran out.
I’ve got to admit he was in such a bad mood he was getting on my nerves, going on about how the US should have known after what happened in the wake of the Second Gulf War that starting a third one wasn’t the way to end to all the petrol price rises and shortages. He’s got a point, but I suppose nobody could have guessed just how catastrophic the backlash from the war would be. They’re calling it the ‘Hydrocarbon Holocaust,’ and some scientists are saying it’s at least partly to blame for the way the weather’s going nuts. One expert said it was the straw that broke the camel’s back, which I suppose was appropriate given the Middle Eastern connection.
I flicked through some more pages, stopping at FEBRUARY 7:
It’s official: going outside is bad for your health. At last a government minister admitted that the mix of car exhaust fumes and the fallout from all the environmental terrorism in the Middle East has made the air dangerous to breathe. He said there was no cause to panic, because it only slightly increases your chance of illness. But the moment he said there was no need to panic, I knew we were in trouble. Lots of other people must feel like me, because after the government minister they interviewed a professor who predicted there would be a run on facemasks and those new domestic air-conditioning units that are supposed to purify the air as well as regulate its temperature.
This is a horribly selfish thing to say given the global nature of the problems, but I’m worried about my job in the camping shop. I mean, who wants to buy tents and hiking gear after hearing stuff like that?
FEBRUARY 11
Dear Diary, I’M PREGNANT!!!! I’ll write more tomorrow, once it’s sunk in. For now, I still can’t believe it. I’m shaking, I’m laughing, I’m crying. I keep on picking up the phone to call Mike, and then putting it down again because I want to actually see his face when I give him the news. I never believed in God or magic or fate or anything until now, but I keep thinking it was Christmas night, and that the lightning had something to do with it.
FEBRUARY 12
I had it all planned: I was going to keep calm, let Mike get in and take off his jacket and shoes, then give him a welcome-home hug as usual and whisper the good news in his ear. But the instant he opened the door he knew something was going on (I suspect the fact I was standing at the far end of the hall, like I’d been waiting there for the last hour for him to appear, had something to do with it). He took one look at me and said, “What’s wrong?” and there was so much concern on his face and so much excitement inside me that I just shouted at the top of my voice: “I’M PREGNANT!”
I’ve never seen ANYONE, let alone Mike, look so stunned.
And I’ve never seen anyone look so happy as he did in the moments that followed. I didn’t have to walk down the hall to hug him because he ran down the hall to hug me. He hugged me so hard it hurt. And then he drew back in alarm. I knew it was the start of him wrapping me up in tissue paper and that it’ll soon get wearing, but I don’t mind. I don’t mind at all.
There was a wistful sigh of the kind I’m used to hearing, but for once it didn’t come from me. It came from Paula. I was more sure than ever that her emotional flaw was related to love in some way, and began to suspect it came bundled with a maternal instinct. Watching her, I got the impression she was seeing more than words on the pages of a diary. She was seeing a man and a woman, maybe even imagining what it was like to be the woman. It was only then I understood how big a cross her emotional flaw must be to bear. She’d feel apart from her fellow Numbers, aware she was profoundly different from them in some way—and yet she’d also feel apart from people like me, bewildered by our lack of logic, by our ability to dream and to feel a sense of wonder. I understood why she’d built a shell around herself and tried to be the archetypal ice maiden. And I understood why it would be almost impossible to keep the act up all the time, why she could maybe manage in public, but not in private as well. The need to love and be loved isn’t superficial, is it? It defines your soul, which might be why Numbers appear so soulless.
Then again, I might have been reading too much into a single sigh.
I turned some more pages. The next couple of dozen entries described the hopes, fears and indulgences of any expectant mother at the start of her pregnancy. I turned those pages quickly, because so many of the words on them echoed things Jen had said. Each time I broke
off from the pages to steal a look at Paula I saw things in her eyes that looked like what I felt in my heart when the pregnant woman’s words chimed with Jen’s.
The next entry I stopped at was for MARCH 7:
I was right about my job. The boss said he has to let me go. I can’t say I’m surprised. Between the winter storms and summer heat, air that’s not good to breathe and water that’s not safe to drink, who wants to go camping any more? Since the outdoors is increasingly being seen as something to be endured rather than enjoyed, he’s going to go in for a new line of products altogether: face masks and protective rainwear, things like that. He needs to cut his overheads to a minimum and, since I was last in, I can’t bitch about being first out.
The timing sucks, though. I suppose you need all your money at the best of times when you’re expecting, and these are far from the best of times. Prices are going through the roof. Take food; they say there’s less of it because of the bad weather, and it costs more to transport because of the fuel crisis. Mike said not to worry about money, but I can see he’s worried.
The following entries were reviews of movies and books, a petty argument and a passionate kiss and make up. And then:
MARCH 9
It was the Scottish Parliament elections yesterday, and Mike and I stayed up late to watch the results come in. It was quite chilling. The biggest gainers were the Greens, which was good, but Scotland First was close behind, standing on a platform of pulling out of Europe and closing off the border with England. Mike hit the nail on the head when he said what was so loathsome about them: they appeal to our fears and bring out the worst in us, rather than inspiring us to be our best—and I’ve a feeling that in the years to come people will have to be at their best. I worry about things like that in a way I never used to. I worry about what sort of world the life growing inside me is going to be living in.
MARCH 27
Something horrible happened at the supermarket today. I slept longer than I meant to—it’s getting uncomfortably hot already, although it isn’t even April yet, and I lay awake until dawn and then slept until way past noon. Anyway, by the time I got to the supermarket the shelves were almost cleared. My bump is plain for all to see, but still somebody pushed me out of the way to get to the bread counter because there were only a few loaves left. I watched those loaves disappear in front of my eyes. One person took the last three, and the person who’d pushed me aside started arguing with them, saying it wasn’t right that someone should take three loaves. Voices were raised and it came to blows, and by the time the security guards arrived to split them up they were fighting like animals, screaming and scratching and tearing at each other. The worst of it was, they were respectably dressed middle-aged women. What’s happening to people? Is this what the future holds? Will we all have to get like that in order to survive?
APRIL 2
It’s time for my three-month check-up. I’m keeping everything crossed, not just my fingers. I’ve not told Mike about the check-up, because he’ll worry. As for myself, I’m not the worrying type. But this is different. Usually I find it easy to be optimistic, but this is too important, and I don’t want to tempt fate.
“I’m getting a bad feeling for her,” I said, without knowing quite why.
Paula nodded, as if she understood exactly what I meant.
I turned to the next page. APRIL 3 was blank, and so was APRIL 4.
I turned to APRIL 5. The handwriting was noticeably less neat. It said:
I’ve been too upset to write anything for the last couple of days. After the doctor gave me the news, I phoned Mike at work. When he answered I wasn’t able to speak. I burst into floods of tears. I think he must have guessed what was wrong before I got myself together enough to be able to tell him. He’s trying to be strong for both of us, but I know that inside he’s as broken up as me.
I can’t believe God could be so cruel.
“She lost the baby,” Paula guessed, her voice little more than a whisper.
The next few pages were blank. Then, under APRIL 8, there was more writing:
We’re going to see the doctor together. He said the sooner the better. I wouldn’t have believed any decision could be so hard. Mike and I sat and talked about it until the early hours. We talked about the sort of life such a badly deformed child would have, and if we’d been talking about someone else’s child it would be obvious that it wouldn’t have much of a life at all. But when it’s your child you ask yourself: Would it be better than no life at all? We talked around some things that are hard to say, hard even to write in a diary no one will ever read. And in the end we were more confused than we’d been in the beginning. We fell asleep on the sofa in each other’s arms, which should have been romantic, but instead just left us stiff and weary come morning.
APRIL 9
Despite all the talking, in the end we asked the doctor what we should do. I don’t mean we asked him to advise us; I mean we asked him to decide for us. We wanted him to play God, but he refused. Mike turned to me and said he’d go along with whatever I wanted. I’d like to think he was trying to be considerate, but I can’t help feeling he was doing to me what the two of us had tried to do to the doctor—and I know I’ll never feel quite the same about him again because of it.
Jesus, as if I didn’t lose enough today.
More empty pages.
APRIL 16
I thought I was feeling about as low as I could get, then today… I’d had these horribly itchy spots for about a week. I’d assumed they were mosquito bites, but then this morning when I got up I went to scratch one of them on my back and felt something like a scab. It fell off onto my finger, and when I brought my hand back in front of me there was this disgusting thing that must be a bed bug. I feel sick just thinking about it. I know it’s not my fault—with the water shortages there’s no way to change the sheets more than once a fortnight, and in this heat you want to change them every day. Still, it makes me feel like a slatternly housewife, and indescribably loathsome. I’m too ashamed to tell Mike. We used to tell each other everything. Now we hardly speak at all, except to argue.
I tried consoling myself with the thought that this is no world to be bringing a child into. But then I considered all the other mothers with children, and that thought was no consolation at all.
I flicked through the rest of the diary but the pages were empty.
We just sat there, as if under a spell. I broke it by coughing as the bitterness of a tainted filter hit the back of my throat.
“We better get going,” I said.
It was no longer raining. We should have left whenever the downpour eased off—we were cutting it fine with our filters—but neither of us had noticed the storm passing.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Paula asked as I headed for the door.
I looked at her, puzzled.
“What we came for, Ben.”
It was the first time she’d used my given name. I was taken aback, so Paula had to provide the answer to her rhetorical question: “Lichens and Mosses of the World.”
She laughed at my forgetfulness, but there was nothing unkind about it.
We found the book quickly, and set off for the bridge.
Our filters were too tainted to wear by the time we got there, so we stopped to change them. As I was spitting the old one into my hand, I heard Paula say, “Damn!”
She’d dropped her fresh filtermask in a puddle. The filthy water must have been as toxic as it looked because the tissue disintegrated in front of our eyes, as if steeped in a bath of pure acid.
Taking out my last filtermask, I put it in the palm of my hand—and then, before Paula realized what I was about to do, I put my hand over her mouth and held it there long enough for the protective membrane to soften and become as much a part of my partner’s face as her skin.
“Ben,” she said, when I took my hand away.
“It’s okay,” I told her.
“But…”
“It’s my fa
ult you’re out here in the first place,” I said.
But we both knew there was more than that behind what I’d just done.
CHAPTER 13
THE ECOSYSTEM
WHEN PAULA AND I GOT BACK TO THE COMMUNITY we said a long goodbye of the kind that has few words but plenty meaningful looks—though I wasn’t sure exactly what the looks meant, and I’m willing to bet she wasn’t, either.
Saying goodbye to Paula meant all I took to bed was Lichens and Mosses of the World. The first thing I noticed when I opened the book was a musty smell that made me think conditions between its pages were ideal for the propagation of its subject matter.
I read every word on the first page but didn’t get any clues, and didn’t even get interested in lichens and mosses.
The prospect of reading another couple of hundred pages wasn’t a particularly pleasant one, so I flicked through them and looked at the photos, hoping something besides a musty smell would leap out at me. It wouldn’t have been quite so bad if the book was about plants that at least had leaves and flowers, but lichens and mosses? One picture looked pretty much like the next, and the captions underneath were mostly in Latin and meant even less to me than the photos.
The text itself might as well have been in Latin, I realized as I ploughed through the turgid prose. I had to read every second paragraph at least twice because my thoughts kept drifting off on a tangent. Occasionally the tangents took me to Doug MacDougall’s flat and his daughter’s classroom, but more often they took me to the Newport library.
After dozing off half a dozen times, waking with a start when the book fell out of my hands and clobbered me, I finally fell into a proper sleep on page 132.
I woke up at five in the morning after a dream like something from Day of the Triffids, with me as Howard Keel, and a heroine who kept changing. One moment she had Paula’s face and Annie MacDougall’s body, and the next moment it was the other way around. I don’t know which version was most disconcerting. Then I remembered Jen had turned up in my dream, too. At least her head did. The rest of her was a penguin, and she was waddling over the bridge.
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