by Robert Ford
‘Moz, what... ? What the... ?’
‘Sorry. I meant to catch up with you guys this morning. Our new managing director has responded to suggestions made by the brass at TWL in terms of modernising the care facilities here, to come in line with the proposed shift in emphasis to the current activity schedule.’ Morris avoided eye contact, instead reading aloud from his notepad. ‘As such, the house library, located in the East Wing, will be closed with immediate effect, pending refurbishment, or rather, recycling.’
‘To shut down the library... it’s heartless and cruel. It’s unforgivable, Morris,’ said Hal.
‘Well, to be fair, Hal...’ Morris paused, steeling himself, ready for the abuse that his next statement might bring. ‘None of the residents can actually read, you know?’
‘But that’s not the point!’ snapped Hal.
Morris shrugged - that was exactly the point. ‘And even if they could we just can’t justify this use of space, not any more.’
‘But where will we do the arts and crafts?’ said Hal, looking to Sam for support.
‘There simply won’t be any, I’m afraid. Not here at Edge Hill.’
‘You what?’ Hal spluttered, his face scarlet with anger.
‘Like I said - curriculum’s changed. It’s a shame but -’
‘So what will there be?’ Said Sam. ‘What are they building?’
Morris paused, swaying slightly as he shifted his weight from one leg to the other.
‘Morris!’ cried Hal, desperate to know.
‘An ice rink. They are turning the library into an indoor ice rink. The idea is that the residents need to spend a greater proportion of their time engaged in physical activity. And there’s only one tennis-court - which we can’t really use in winter. Anyway, the plan from upstairs is that the residents can ice skate. Easy enough for them to pick up, and easily supervised. Cheap to run. Open all day, every day. Personally I think it’s all a bit silly, but...’
Morris had delivered these last few phrases looking down at his toes, muttering towards his enormous navel. Sam for his part found it all rather depressing. At least the time they spent in the library was generally peaceful, and whatever anyone said about their cognitive abilities, Sam was convinced by now that the residents’ unsophisticated daubs in fact denoted something, that some element of their makeup still clung to sentience.
Hal looked unwell. He bent forward and grabbed at his chest, minute gasps escaping from between pale lips.
‘Hal? You alright?’ said Sam, thinking that perhaps he was on the cusp of a stroke or some such other trauma.
Hal said nothing but continued to fret, to grow more and more puce, straining to pass what turned out to be a huge bolus of language.
‘ThatshitforbrainsfascistpiglickerifhethinkshecanjusttakeawayMYlibraryhe’sgotanotherthingcomingi’llshit’imi’llshit’imMorrisyouwatcharrrhhhhhhhhhhh!’
And with that Hal was gone, hurrying away through the doors and along the corridor.
Sam and Morris stood and stared at each other for a moment, shell-shocked.
‘Crap.’
Together they bolted after Hal, through the East Wing and out of the atrium onto the front lawn. Rounding the eastern edge of the house, they were alarmed to see Hal up ahead charging through the service area.
‘Oh dear,’ said Morris. ‘This can only end badly.’
The removals men were almost finished at Kirkham’s house, three or four of them in their red uniforms milling about outside, waiting for the off. Otherwise the house was quiet.
Sam and Morris closed on Hal as he scuttled up the path and rang the doorbell, giving it a much longer blast than was necessary. He rang it again and again and again until eventually Kirkham’s daughter appeared at the door.
‘Hello,’ she said in a fine, lilting voice, not in the least bit taken aback by the furious-looking man in front of her and the two others hanging further back. Then, leaning forward and with an exaggerated use of her index finger, she pressed the doorbell. ‘Do you hear that?’ she said with a smile, tilting her head a little to the side for emphasis.
Hal gawped; having worked himself up into such a fury, this young woman’s appearance and relative good humour had clearly thrown him.
‘What... what are you doing?’
‘I wondered perhaps, if you thought the bell might have been broken? As you can hear...’ She paused, giving the bell a short blast. ‘It’s not. It’s not broken.’
Hal shifted about on the step, embarrassed.
‘I’m guessing you’re after my dad? He’s -’
But before she could finish Hal had brushed past her into the hallway of the house.
‘Kirkham! Kirkham!’ he thundered.
She turned and watched Hal stomp inside, looking both surprised and amused by this rude little man.
And soon enough her father appeared, appalled to see a member of staff in his house at all, let alone one that was shouting to such a degree. For a moment the two men simply stood and stared at each other. Then, with a discreet, open-palmed gesture, Kirkham managed to usher Hal from the hallway towards an adjoining room, closing the door behind them.
Sam and Morris came to a halt at the house.
‘Hello,’ she said.
‘Ha!’ Sam coughed by way of a response as they caught their breath on the front step.
Meanwhile, inside, a storm was raging, and even though his speech was filtered by the intervening walls to the extent that it was impossible to decipher individual words, the intensity of Hal’s vitriol was unmistakeable - a foot-stamping, arm-waving, frothing kind of fume.
‘Goodness me. That little fellow seems pretty upset,’ she said from her position against the door frame, arms folded across her front: a stance that was comfortable, not guarded in any way.
‘He gets like this,’ was Sam’s awkward, smiled reply. ‘Sorry.’
She smiled back and shrugged, and Sam looked at his shoes and clenched his fists, an attempt to formulate something further, something droll, or even halfway entertaining. Eventually, though, he had to admit some kind of small defeat; he had nothing, his mind gone blank.
‘Um. Do you smoke at all?’ Sam held forth a mangled pack, a straight-armed gesture almost if he were presenting a fine bouquet.
‘Ta very much,’ she said, helping herself.
They left Morris to loiter at the front door and over to a small wooden bench.
‘I’m Megan, by the way.’
They both sat.
‘Sam. Nice to meet you.’
Megan lit her cigarette and passed the lighter back to Sam.
‘Your friend looks very nervous. It’s funny, he’s so big, you’d almost think he’d be immune to all this. To normal stuff, you know. Bother and that.’ She leaned forward a little so that her hair fell to drape the sides her face. Away by the house, Morris crunched across the snow, pacing up and down outside the front door, head down, hands buried to the wrist in trouser pocket.
‘Morris? I know what you mean. He is very solid, isn’t he? Guess he’s worried about Hal. He can be a little unpredictable.’
‘Well, it sounds like he can look after himself,’ she said, head turned towards the house.
Sam nodded, exhaling, the smoke almost the same colour as the sky.
After several minutes a door opened, then slammed. Opened again. Then Hal appeared, storming out through the front of the house at quite some speed.
‘Dickie! Dickie!’ Hal called as he went by, and such was the cracked, appealing tone of his voice, that Sam stood up quite suddenly and made to follow him.
‘I thought your name was Sam?’ Megan asked, a little confused.
‘It is,’ he said, turning and looking down at her. ‘I don’t know why he... he’s ill, I think. Bye.’
‘Bye,’ she called, waving as she watched him lope off across the snow.
After he had gone a little way Sam looked back over his shoulder, back towards the house. Kirkham had arrived at the front door, eng
aged in a series of expressive gesticulations, while opposite him stood Morris, palms raised, the peacemaker. Of course, it was Megan that was the object of his stare; she remained huddled on the bench, legs crossed, cigarette poised between the fingers of her right hand as she gazed in the direction of her father.
‘She knows my name,’ Sam thought to himself. ‘She knows my name...’
A WINTER OF DISCONTENT
The lights in the Rec were always kept candle-low, an easy gloom that complemented the scruffy bar and its bingers.
Towards the back of the room, in their usual position, half-sprawled upon the sofas, were Sam, Rachel, Ted, Spike and Hal. The group looked dour, having been subjected for some time to Hal’s prattling.
‘It’s a disgrace. For this guy to come in and close the library - it’s bordering on an abuse of the patients’ civil liberties. Against their human rights.’
‘Not being funny, Hal, but since when did you give a toss about the patients’ civil rights?’ Spike regretted the comment almost as soon as it had left his mouth, wishing that he could have somehow recalled his words.
Hal glared at him from across the small table. ‘Of course I care... but it’s not just that, it’s not just the library. It’s this whole thing. Don’t you see? Now Daniels is gone, that’s it. Party’s over, mate. And I’m not too proud to admit it.’ Hal looked around the other faces of the group, drawing blanks from all. ‘I thought we had something here, a community or a way of life that was different, separate from everything. Special. Ah, fuck it...’ Hal trailed off, slumping back into the ragged cushions behind him.
‘I don’t mean to be rude,’ Rachel said. ‘And we’d miss you, but... would you think about leaving?’
It was a good question, a reasonable question, and also the one that no one dared put to Hal. Not ever.
‘Leave?’ said Hal. ‘Leave to where exactly?’
There was a pause, a communal intake of breath: who would say anything when he was in this kind of mood? At the back of the room behind the bar, Alan began to hiccup, his noisy diaphragm punctuating the tense atmosphere.
‘Back to the city. Back to... real life, I guess,’ Spike offered.
All eyes turned to Hal. But the explosion of rage that everyone was expecting failed to materialise. Instead, he leant forward and retrieved his cigarettes, lighting up with slow deliberate movements.
‘To the city,’ he said, repeating Spike’s words, chewing them over. ‘Only an imbecile would say such a thing. Or worse - an Australian.’
‘Steady on, mate,’ said Spike.
‘Do you know what it’s like out there? Really - what life is like out there in the city? Do you?’
‘Not for a while, but...’
‘Well, let me tell you. Other than the noise and the filth and the overcrowding and the crime and the rats and the disease and the pigeons and the government and the police and the jobs that scorch your soul, do you know what the really bad thing about living in the city is?’
‘The smell?’
‘The people.’
‘The people?’
‘The people. They are the single biggest reason why I could never move back there, or to the Enclaves for that matter. There’s just no way.’
‘What d’you mean?’ asked Sam.
‘I mean that the whole place is rotten. To the core. To the core.’ Hal took a long draw on his cigarette, a pause in which to gather. ‘Do you know the best thing to ever happen to us, to our civilisation? No? Well let me tell you. Global warming, that’s what.’
Blank looks about the table.
‘Don’t you see? The idea that our actions were directly affecting the world in a most negative way - that our lifestyles were sending us to the brink of disaster. It was a wake-up call. A big fucking sign that said: Come on guys, this isn’t working. Think about it. Change. And the worst thing that’s ever happened to us? The worst thing was that we found out how to mitigate these effects through technology. Not through thought or restraint or care. The appliance of science. Boom. Done. There you go. As you were. Carry on regardless.
‘And now... now look where we are. There’s no community, no empathy, no interest. People live in a way that is completely inhuman, leading insular lives, preening, homogenised, confused, self-obsessed illiterates surrounded by the devices that have made it possible to live without structure or engagement or conscience, that have placed people one step removed from morality - and when I say that, I mean morality in the old-fashioned sense, based on one’s principles of behaviour within a network of individuals and not within an electronic vacuum whereby actions are practically devoid of meaning. It’s wrong, all wrong. They are stricken. And it’s sad. And it’s ugly. And I want no part in it.’
Hal’s eyes shone in the gloom. His words had rung some kind of truth with the group. They knew what he meant; had experienced it first hand. And in a way, that was the reason why most of them had ended up within the snug confines of Edge Hill - a place as removed as it was possible to be from the painful realities of the world.
‘It is sad,’ Rachel said dreamily, thinking, probably, of her parents out there somewhere in the city.
‘But that’s wrong, isn’t it?’ Sam started.
From the other side of the table Hal looked up, his face fixed into something of a snarl.
‘I mean, just because you don’t understand something... that’s not an excuse to just not engage with it, or to abandon it completely. That’s just as bad.’
‘What?’ Hal spat the word out, livid.
‘You can’t just write people off like that. People aren’t just bad or uncaring. You talk about interest - well, that’s just it, isn’t it? To be interested. To be involved. That’s not what we are doing here at Edge Hill. This is a hiding place. You said it. And there’s no future in that, either.’
Sam took a large slug from his drink and sat back in his chair, awaiting the inevitable backlash. But it never came. Instead, Hal got up from the sofa and straightened his tunic. Then without saying a word to anyone, he crossed the room and took a seat at the bar, where he ordered a large scotch from Alan.
For a time the group sat in silence; no one knew exactly what to say. Discussions like these just didn’t happen at Edge Hill; after all, what was the point? Better to live in peace, not ruffle any feathers. There were certain truths at the heart of their existence at the facility that simply went unsaid, and for good reason: it was a life too fragile to bear such dissection, a dandelion house full of butterfly folk.
The following day was Christmas Eve and winter had stepped fully into its stride, robbing the trees and hedgerows of their foliage and leaving in turn a thick blanket of white across the landscape.
‘Aussie rum, mate. Finest rum in the world. And it’ll keep the cold out, hey?’
Spike held out a battered hip flask in Sam’s direction.
‘Bottoms up,’ Sam said, tilting his head back, letting the warm, sour liquid trace through his gullet and into his chest.
They were standing by one of the small perimeter fences that bordered the rough pastureland beyond. The dense white made the landscape appear boundless, and by comparison the two men looked rather small as they toiled away in their dark woollen greatcoats and wellington boots, administering the necessary running repairs.
A little way off, Morris ran a group of around twenty residents along the path; dressed as they were in padded white bodysuits, the group looked strangely martial, marines off on Alpine manoeuvres.
‘Times are changing, hey?’ Spike stood from the squatting position he had taken over a shabby red toolbox. ‘More exercise. More time in the pods, locked down. It’s no way to live. You might say, why does it matter? They don’t know any better. But they do. Somewhere deep down they do. Handlers know that. Brass don’t.’ Spike watched the group run past. ‘Hates the cold, Moz, poor bugger. But he’s the only one’ll take them out at the moment.’
‘It’s a shame. I just wish...’ Sam looked back towards t
he house, imagining Hal, in some room or other, brooding, serious.
‘I worry about Hal, that’s all. He seems depleted. Tired. Before, even when he was rude, it was fun somehow. But I don’t see that any more. It’s gone.’
Spike stepped forward and leant on the fence, testing their work. ‘Yeah, right. There’s truth in that, I think, mate. But you know regime changes have never been easy. I mean look at the good people of the Netherlands. Lowlanders, don’t they call them?’
‘Right...’ said Sam, expecting Spike to expand on this point of reference.
‘Yup. Transition. No doubt about it. Need room to itch and scratch a bit, you know?’
‘Yeah, I guess,’ Sam said with as much enthusiasm as he could muster. Maybe Spike was right? Certainly he hoped so.
They were almost done with the fence, and had in fact started to tidy away the tools when Rachel and Megan appeared, trudging towards them through the snow from the other side of the house.
‘Morning, guys,’ said Rachel, the collar of her greatcoat drawn together so that her nose and mouth were partially obscured. ‘This is Megan. Megan, this is Spike, our resident... um.’
Spike stepped forward, tipping an imaginary cap. ‘If you see any rodents in that house there, Megan, you come right to me, OK? There’ll be no rodents in that house,’ he said with the utmost sincerity.
‘Yup. Gottcha,’ said Megan.
‘And this is Sam.’
‘Yeah, we met. The other day. At the house,’ Sam interrupted, his face colouring rich crimson.
‘Hello, Sam.’ Megan gave him a warm smile that seemed to make his midriff sag, his shoulders slump and his elbows peak; a melting of his core.
‘Megan starts work here in a couple of days,’ Rachel said matter-of-factly.
‘Wow,’ said Sam, rather too loud.
‘After Christmas? Then you’ll come to the dinner tonight. Should be fun!’ Spike spluttered with great enthusiasm.
‘That would be lovely. Sure.’ Megan smiled again, first at Spike and then at Sam, who appeared to be turning a strange blotched blue and pink, his face taut and somewhat troubled.