by Maggie Gee
Elroy and Shirley will wait for ever. At half-past three, in intensive care, where they are living a life quite insulated from the world where the city dreads and waits, after everything possible has been done, their beloved Franklin slips down into a coma.
And now something happens that no one’s expecting except Professor Sharp and his colleagues, but they have all gone away inland.
With an unearthly roar, with a schlooping sound as if giant dinosaurs are sucking the drains, with a rushing of wind and a shiver of motion that suddenly grips the whole city, the water-levels plummet, the floods sink down, the dirty water pours back into the sea, moiling and boiling blackly downwards, shooting boats and buses along like matchwood, baring dark grass and sodden brickwork, dragging along sheds and lawn-mowers and cars on their backs like drowned beetles – and inside the buildings, and on high ground, everyone stops what they’re doing and listens: something very big is breathing above them; after months of wishing, praying, cursing, it retreats in minutes, the flood is gone.
Gerda and Winston are suddenly pulled down, kicking and struggling, deep, deeper, down between the silver-slimed trunks and stems, down through the boggy roots and suckers, down past the water-fleas and half-grown frogs and blushing sticklebacks and spinning toadlets, and whorls of rotting, forgotten objects, shoes and handbags and hoses and nozzles, thrashing like snakes in the force of the water – and Winston spots it, his Bendy Rabbit, stuck in the angle of a black drowned branch, and grabs it to him as he hurtles past – but Gerda knows they cannot fight it, their only hope is to ride the tide-race, and as it sweeps them down deep underground, into a labyrinth of drainage channels, she kicks her strong feet, and holds on to Winston, and breathing the air bubbles in her red hair (but it suddenly loses its red and goes dark, the colour shuts down, it’s a black and white world) the two children shoot along the grey chill tunnel which leads on for ever, and only gets colder.
There is a long pause, in the sucked-out city.
Eighteen
And then it comes, the white line of water, moving in from very far away, and at first, to Moira, it seems to come slowly, but she crawls out, shivering, on to her balcony, into the light where she can see at last, and she stands, staring, transfixed by joy
but duty, duty, the drumstick of duty, taps her shoulder, peremptory, and she blunders back through to rescue her books, strains her arms as she tries to embrace them, sharpspined, heavy, why always so heavy
The Brothers and Sisters are all looking inwards, watching the infinitely interesting thing, the prospect of seeing justice done; this is the beginning of Judgement Day. Bruno Janes has Sister Kilda by the hair, and then by the neck underneath her hair, and is shaking her, slightly, as a dog would a rat, and she is too terrified to resist; limp, eyes glazed, head lolling forwards, a useless bud on a broken stalk. She is finished, thinks May, he will finish her off, and she tries to force herself to her feet, but the old fear crouches like smog on her chest, crushing her lungs, thickening her tongue, freezing her body on its chair – No, she can’t bear it. No, not possible. ‘Dirk,’ she whispers. ‘Dirk. This is mad.’
She says it quietly, timidly, but the room is quieter than she can be, and in that cold, electric silence, Bruno’s head swivels like the head of a weasel, he lets go of Kilda, who slumps to the floor, and those terrifying eyes stare into them, at May, who is old, who is only a widow, who has shrunk, with age, to a paper doll, who feels her mouth shrivel, pucker, dither, whose heartbeats lurch and then cascade, May White, who is weak, who has never been brave, and Dirk, poor thing, her youngest son.
‘Brother Dirk.’ Bruno breathes. He pauses, smiles. ‘Brother Dirk. You will come and execute the sentence.’
The room gives up a low sigh, a faint roar, as if they had all been holding their breath, but suddenly May becomes unsure; perhaps the roar is outside the window; ‘No,’ she hears herself say, quite distinctly, ‘No,’ and she catches her son by the sleeve, but only Bruno seems to have heard her; the Brothers and Sisters are on their feet, they run to the window, tripping over each other, shoving, falling, and Bruno is shouting ‘Order, ORDER’, but no one looks at him, no one is listening any more
Mohammed is praying in Parliament Close, ten metres away from Government Manse, as near as the policeman will let him go; it seems he’s the only policeman on duty; they eye each other, warily, but the policeman’s trained not to be frightened of foreigners; he tries an official grin at Mohammed, who thinks the policeman is sneering at him. Neither man’s heard the news this morning: both of them wonder why the close is empty.
Mohammed has marched from the station, sweating, a man with a mission he doesn’t want, a man who is no longer himself, whose subtle heart has been squeezed and twisted, whose head is irradiated by grief. Mohammed, today, is superhuman; he is emptied out; he has become a message. He moves in its wake, a walking cipher:
I will have such revenges that
What they are yet I know not but
He prays to be spared from doing this thing: he prays to Allah for help, for grace: he prays that the woman with the peace placard will go away, somewhere else, somewhere safe, for she has done nothing, she is just a woman; his eyes flick across her, constantly, tormented by her youth, her sad eyes; she’s not so much older than his beautiful sister; Jamila, Jamila; the world goes red, but he makes himself focus on the young woman; she sits on the ground with her mobile phone, dialling then muttering to herself, unhappy; perhaps she has parents she needs to contact, perhaps she is worrying about her baby (how much Rhuksana had wanted a baby)
Moira smiles to see the wave coming, she laughs;
in another life, there is a dog, barking;
she hears her Fool in part of her brain, the oldest, simplest part of her brain, but her feeling self is lost in the future, finding the relief of an end, at last, the washing away of her words, her wounds
how very much she had wanted a baby. Mohammed’s glad now not to have children, no child to suffer from what he will do. How many children have lost their fathers? Let Mr Bliss’s children lose their father, let Bliss’s children know pain and shame. But once again Mohammed starts praying: Spare me, Allah, from this great sin … Spare me, Allah, from hating children
Shirley is weeping in Elroy’s arms, deafened, blinded by helpless loss: ‘It makes no difference that there were two, he was just himself, he was Franklin, Franklin’ –
Mohammed’s prayers have gone wrong again, for the anger is burning and twisting inside him, the new mad anger, the tungsten heat
– must every pain be endured again? The lost child, the shattered family – Winston, Franklin, the names of love, darkening into names for torment
It must be time for Bliss to arrive. ‘Excuse me, miss,’ says Mohammed, most politely, he knows city people find Muslims frightening, even peace protesters might find him frightening, ‘have you got the right time? My watch is slow,’ but Zoe (whose phone is losing its signal, who is crouched there tensely beside her placard, trying to reach her beloved Viola to tell her she loves her no matter what, to thank Viola for making her happy) shakes her head, glowers, leave me alone, she’s noticed him staring at her before, now the stupid bastard is making a pass, and, desperate to talk to her darling girl, furious with his dull male face, on impulse she gives Mohammed the finger, although she is here protesting for peace, although she can see he’s a foreigner and Zoe believes in being kind to foreigners
Lottie and Harold are in their helicopter, jammed in with Lola and five other people who paid so much they could not be left behind, but the helicopter is overloaded, it is struggling on across the nearby fields, there is a smell of hot diesel, of straining metal; then it lurches, yaws, in a sudden wind, in the strengthening torrent of air from the wave that is racing nearer, blank, enormous, its summit blocking out the sky. In the first sheet of spray, the thing slips, tries to climb, finds a blind silver wall, a final valley
Zoe jabs one finger up, hatefully
‘Shirl
ey, I love you,’ Elroy sobs. ‘I know,’ she says, ‘but it’s not enough –’ they sit there, struggling to contain the pain, which is wilder, larger, than their wracked bodies
Together, separately, they long for death
Lottie thinks, I loved brightness, luck, light
but then it is dazzling, and all around her
Ian’s in the zoo, waiting for the wave, his easel set up on the top of the hill. Though he knows that the image will never be seen, never collected, sold, kept, he determines to draw the wave as it comes, to catch the beauty with his hand, his eye, for in the end only the moment matters, the glass bead swung on its rope of sunlight
the angry child jabs with one hate-fuelled finger: die, you bastard, she prays, just die
at the last moment, Ian sees the wave coming and thinks of the birds in their aviary, he has no ark, he can do so little, but he leaves his easel, he leaves his art, he runs like a madman down the hill, he snatches a gardener’s discarded loppers and hacks, smashes at the birds’ wire cage, and at first they are stunned, they cower together, but as the first tide pours over the ground they flutter up, crying, dizzy, crazed, they find the raw hole he has cut to the light, and spin past his shoulders, a column of smoke
all over the city, the birds flare upwards, a shawl of starlings, a cape of crows, a staggering, hurtling volley of pigeons, herons up-ended into broken mayflies, thin legs splayed by the weight of the wind, but the highest flyers, the boldest wing-tips, power up the air, their mountain slope, needing nothing at all in that single second but steely hope, survive, survive
as others smash into flurries of feathers
drenched, dulled, death drags them down
as Zoe stabs at the air with her finger, a low black car purrs past the policeman and up to the president’s glossy door; Mohammed assumes it is Mr Bliss, not knowing the darkened windows conceal a nervous delegate from his own country, part of a desperate last-ditch attempt to negotiate (or buy) a peace: Goodbye, Rhuksana, goodbye my love: and one final time he prays to be spared, clutching the masbaha beads in his pocket: ‘Oh God, you are peace, from you comes peace,’ but the other voice says
I shall do such things, I know not what
I shall do such things
They shall be the terrors of the earth
But Allah instructs him, ‘Incline towards peace’
Moira stands proud on her balcony, stretching her painful bones to the sky, shouting, ‘Come, Come, O Lord, I am ready’, but the kind water takes the sound away, she is spared the noise of her own screaming, she is safe to do it, dwarfed, deafened; the roaring water is below her feet, the moil that comes before the crest of the wave, and she takes the first book, the first torment, the first of the bricks in her life’s dark walls, and she flings it, opening, its pages like wings, and a second, and a third, out on the bright water, the free muscled shine of the water’s skin, the finally accepting, limitless body which has time and room to take them all, to dissolve her prison, to take her home, and she flings them, laughing, one after another, book after book, bird after bird, they can no longer peck her or make her suffer, no longer make her care for them, they are free at last, they are on their own, and so she can be free, now they are gone, it is over, over, the lover has come
death crashes in through Shirley’s window and takes her and Elroy in its arms
on Daffodil Hill, the highest part of the city, people are running, scrambling upwards, the unfit straining as they puff up the slopes, young parents sprinting ahead of them, children straddling their skinny shoulders, turning briefly to look at the great wall of dark with the crest of silver pouring onwards – impossible, unstoppable
the final, unthinkable, astounding thing
and the sun lights up the detailed beauty of each distinct figure, each bright life, running, falling; sculpted by light; the only thing that can never be copied
Look, there’s Davey, hand in hand with Delorice – he pulls her up into a cedar tree: ‘I can’t,’ she says, ‘I can’t, Davey,’ but ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘you can, we can do it,’ and they climb, from a distance like a couple of children, starting in the cradle of the lowest branches, then up, up, she is giggling with terror, ‘Trust me, Delorice,’ and at last she trusts him, the essential Davey who could always be trusted, clutches his shirt, and he hauls her upwards to the highest branches, till the wood is too slender, and wavering, dizzy, they can climb no more – at the top of the tree, they cling to each other
but the crowd on the hill pushes on upwards, struggling, now, pushing, screaming, red and contorted, insects scrambling on top of each other, a mill of ants in its final terror, but till the wave comes they will fight to survive
and then the wave comes; then the wave comes
Allah the beneficent, the merciful, has asked too much of his servant Mohammed: to ignore a lifetime of slights is inhuman: he groans as the small white finger prods the air, she has no reason to insult him; smash the rude girl and the monkey-grin policeman and Mr Bliss, who murdered Jamila, crush the scorn and the ignorance, the lies and greed of colonialism; they will find at last that Islam is strong, it will end in flames, it will end in fire
Moira is happy, but something is scratching, something is tearing, a pain, a sound, something she tries not to hear, but hears, as she throws out the last of Angela’s books, the books which have given her so much trouble, the texts which made Moira a drudge, a slave, and as they fly, she no longer hates them, they do not need her, they can go alone: Moira Penny is finally free; then she hears the sound for what it is; it is Fool, barking, her dog, her Fool, the warm animal body trapped inside, and Moira at last is free to feel pity, and she crawls back inside, she runs down the stair, she unlocks the door to her animal’s prison, and it hurtles out, huge, warm, slobbering, loving, it thunders with her up to the roof; and, hugging its neck, so warm, so silky, so infinitely soothing to her thin cracked fingers, she climbs with Fool through the attic window; the water is only an arm’s length below; barking, laughing, they jump together, they swim together away into the distance, his curled ears floating out like wings, her long grey hair like silver weed, she kicks her shoes off, she kicks her clothes off, she lets it all fall away to nothingness, nothing, any more, but their tired bodies
and the wave sweeps towards them from Daffodil Hill; when they have to let go, they let go together
but Mohammed is spared, as he asked to be
in Parliament Close, there’s a roar of cold wind as Allah unveils a different future, Zoe turns to see where it’s coming from and pauses, transfixed, by the cliff of the wave, and her very last thought is still Viola: a second later it crashes across them: they do not end in fire, but water
‘Are we high enough?’ whispers Delorice. Delorice and Davey hold each other, riding the tree like willowy gymnasts as it bends with the movements of their beautiful bodies. ‘Yes,’ Davey answers, and thinks of the stars: how faint, how far: invisible, but shining above them, the heavenly bodies he’s loved since boyhood, spread thicker than Delorice’s electric hair, thicker than leaves, thicker than grass, is it time to say goodbye to the stars
and at first, because the wave’s far away, the top of their tree seems to float worlds above it, they shiver with hope, survive, survive, they breathe the bright pollen on the sunlit air, but as the water roars towards them they suddenly see how puny they are, the cold wind rushes before the wave and their cedar bends and snaps like a match-stick two ants flying two specks of stardust
the Brothers and Sisters plunge from the Towers; One Way, One Path has become survival; Father Bruno is trying to keep them inside, they must preserve order, it is Judgement Day, and he is the Judge, and they must obey, they must follow the Book, they must keep the Faith, but no one is listening but Dirk and May, who are stuck at the back of the rush for the windows, and May is struggling to wake Kilda, who fainted when Bruno shook her and dropped her as time concertinas, this is May’s daughter, Kilda is the child she failed to save from the paralysin
g rage of her father: ‘Wake up,’ says May; ‘come with me, my dear,’ and her pounding heart lifts her over the fear that has always held her in a cage of knuckles
and suddenly turning on Father Bruno, who is bellowing about Sin and Greed, she remarks, quite loudly, in her ‘mother’ voice, ‘And you, young man, had better pipe down, I think you’ve said enough for one day’ – then to Dirk, who is watching, biting his fist, wishing his mother would think of him, she says, ‘Good boy, Dirk, we can lift her together,’ and they link arms, clumsily, to try and lift her, Dirk has the strength and May has the courage
her fingers beat a small tender tattoo on the biceps her son has worked into whipcord
touching him, she approves of him
at last his mother approves of him
but Kilda opens her big grey eyes and sees the immense water coming, the amazing thing she had always known since the first bad dreams began to wake her
the water surges above the window, the last People of the Book must drown
and the last day splits down a thousand tears, each minute, each second, each broken moment, into light and dark, presence and absence, the dead and the living, the lost, the found
white flash of a wing where an arm is swimming
dissolving, now, to a ghost image
blurring, doubling in the haze of the future –
one last white curve would complete love’s circle
the future bending to find the past
life from the end to the beginning
three thousand generations of humans
stiff and damp from their spell underground
pushing up alive from the flood-washed catacombs
pulling themselves to their feet like apes