The Child Garden

by Geoff Ryman

  Only leave us alone.

  From the top of the Tarty flats, a bell begins to toll. The emergency bell. Ms Will arrives with a blanket, and begins to wrap Thrawn in it. Thrawn’s teeth are clicking together as she quakes with cold. Milena winces. It goes against instinct to put rough blankets on skinless flesh.

  The Fire Warden arrives. She is trained to give treatment. In summer, if there was a fire in the floating Ark, pumps would spray water from the Estuary. Fire tugs would arrive, great steam boats that shoot water from cannons. But all the water is frozen now. The pumps don’t work.

  The Fire Warden kneels down and opens up her box of viruses and cream.

  ‘Leave her alone,’ says Milena, standing very still and quiet. The Fire Warden doesn’t seem to understand that she means it.

  ‘We’ll use open treatment,’ says the Fire Warden. She is a brisk and efficient Party Member. She has been trained to do good. She has been waiting for a chance to be needed. Her viruses are speaking, to the viruses of those who hear her, social viruses that know how to help the sick. ‘We need to clean the burns, then keep them open to dry. Here.’ The Fire Warden passes Milena a syringe. She wants Milena to take a blood sample. ‘Test for nitrogen, prothrombin time, electrolyte levels, blood gases, hematocrit…’

  Milena brushes the syringe away.

  ‘Someone else is coming,’ says Milena again. She means someone who can give better treatment than us.

  ‘Don’t see who it could be,’ said the Fire Warden, getting out her creams. ‘The Estuary is frozen, the Fire Tugs can’t get here.’ This was her responsibility, this was why she was trained and designated, so she could do good in the world. It is impossible to do good in the world, impossible that is, without also doing harm. The creams, the swabbing, the painkillers will do harm, relative harm.

  Milena kicks the box over. The creams scatter, the applicators spin. Something made of glass shatters.

  ‘What the…that is medicine!’ wails the woman outraged.

  So are the viruses. Relative harm, relative good.

  The What Does Lady slides back the hangar doors. ‘Come see, oh quick!’ she says, gesturing to Ms Will. ‘A wagon on the ice!’

  Ms Will goes to the door. The Fire Warden bitterly gathers up her medicines. Milena watches over Thrawn. She looks at her shivering jaws and staring eyes.

  And so I’m going to pass you over to them, Thrawn. You could have been beautiful. Maybe you will be. But you will still be theirs.

  She hears the sound of galloping and looks up. Ms Will and the What Does are pushing back all of the great screens. There is a flood of cold air. Galloping across the ice, four great white horses, silvery as if frosted by the cold come pulling a fire wagon. Steam boils up as thick as cream from the boiler, and from the nostrils of the beasts. The wagon thunders up the bank of frozen mud and right into the Tarty flats, into the covered atrium, the horses reined in, snorting, half-turning and coming to a halt.

  And Milena sees them. For the first time she sees the Men in White, the Garda. They are the masters. Their faces are screened by plastic, screened from the rest of us. For them, all of us are diseased.

  ‘Look at my kit!’ the Fire Warden says. ‘She kicked it!’

  The Garda do not reply. One of them takes hold of the Fire Warden’s shoulders and moves her aside. He wears gloves. The other, with practised motion, peels back the blanket, slices through the clothes. Thrawn lies sad and exposed and barely breathing, looking back up at Milena, sadly, as if asking her a regretful, reasonable question. Why? Pads are stuffed into her nose and ears.

  The Men in White start covering her with spray. Milena looks away, to the horses.

  The horses are huge, white, muscled. The horses wear wraparound mirror-shades. It keeps them looking only at what their masters want them to see. They toss their heads and their smoky yellow manes dance. Horses are beautiful even in slavery, because no one has told them they are ugly. Horses have no demons.

  Milena hears the sound of the spray. Thrawn will grow new skin, a new mind. She will not be Thrawn anymore. There will be someone else, living a quite happy, very limited life, with gaps in her memory. She won’t feel anguish over what happened. A relative good then? Tell yourself it’s a relative good, then, Milena.

  The only place Thrawn is alive is here, now, as I remember.

  Saviour.

  hey fish it’s me again!!!!!!

  Milena finds a sealed oiled pouch, waiting for her when she returns from space. She remembers the spidery, shaking scrawl.

  —well—they want the old lady to go back and she just doesn’t want to go! broke my leg again—well—my hip but it amounts to the same thing—now they want to get the old dam back—thats what they want—get her safely on some old sofa and we’ll bring her dinner whenever we remember

  us polar types get old, fish—you don’t know what that means—it means you start to fall apart—but what it feels like is that all the world starts dropping away too, piece by piece—it feels like they want to take the sky away from me

  I used to be young—used to lay out all night long, feel the air sting its way over my face like someone touching me and i ud look up into that clear air and all the stars ud seem to look back at me—like all the stars have a face—

  hell, fish, i could trek over forty k to the stores and drink all night hot raw whisky and roll back all in two days with no sleep—there was old betty who used to haul the stuff in on her back—we used to bath in whisky, wash the old tin plates in it and spend all day shooting fire out of our paws—blasting the stones apart and smelt them for metal like we was making hot soup—set up a sound system on the ice—sound system on the ice and we ud dance and blast and boom and batter and hunt penguins with lasers!

  we were so crazy—we ud go fishing underwater in wet suits with music in headphones and whisky in a little tube that went straight into our mouths—shoot that fish! sip that stuff! shake your tail to old bessie smith, high and pure in the phones—it was like we could make life up like kids playing pretend—they ever tell you about bessie smith, fish???????????—honey, go ask your virus, go get it to play you old bessie—that’s what we mined to in the dry rocks—bessie and satchmo—singing to us in the blue blue sea—history alive in your ear singing like the wind on the ice—we ud go swimming up the innards of an iceberg like a smooth glassy cheese all full of holes and glossy light—light going up the cracks, catching in the bubbles and strange dead creatures froze right in the middle of it—fish, i was young—i was young for years fore i met my husband—had rolfa when i was 40 years old—thats how late i left it all that domestic stuff—the wallpaper the curtains the dishes the carpets and the four four walls

  HELL FISH

  they want me back in London—so I can be old—they want me to shed the ice like snakeskin—they want me to lose the cold—lose the stars—lose the fire—i could trek baby and blast—they want me still not moving not hearing

  it dont matter being deaf down here home in the cold—theres my dogs—they fetch for me—theres the sun on the ice and the fresh air—theres the post coming to bring letters and to talk

  being deaf in south ken means being shut in with a little shivering squidge who thinks your going to eat her—im deaf fish and i cant walk—broken hip and joints that have ground to a halt—i have to crawl my cold little fish—so theyll ship me home like walrus meat—theyll fix my joints sure—and then say i got to stay in south ken till theres nothing left of me—just some old animated rug barely talking just reaching up for her little tipple with a hand that shakes—some old withered dam rotting like leaf mould just able to lift her head—with no light no sound no dance no cold no warm—nothing

  where we all head fish—where we all head and ive arrived here

  so heres what im going to do—im going to crawl—im going to crawl out onto that ice in the night—ill roll over and look up at the stars—i know cold honey—it settles slow—you just go to sleep—im going to go to sleep looking at tho
se stars—by the time you get this fish ill be long gone

  love is a torch you pass it on—tried to give it to my baby—my great singing lump of a kid—opera hell i hate opera—where ud she get it from?????? just herself—love is a torch and you pass it on like someone passed it to you fish—you never told me about your mama but she must have loved you—or someone must have—so you loved rolfa rolfa loved you—you just dug your heels in—me too kid—this is happy—this is some old dam digging her heels in—into the ice—dont be sad this is the best

  love

  hortensia patel

  Present tense, still present, still tense:

  When?

  This is me, packing for outer space. I’m running around my lacquered rooms with a tremor in my belly. I’m still afraid of Thrawn, of space, of The Comedy.

  I’m worrying about my house plants. Who can I give them to who will not kill them with over-watering, or kill them with neglect? I am worrying over a potted plant of basil, which I use in cooking, and a hydrangea. This is my main concern at the moment, the chewing gum my conscious mind is recycling over and over until all savour of it is gone.

  There is a knock on the sliding panels on my Tarty flat. They rattle in their runners. Is it Thrawn? I am Terminal, I am Terminal, I tell myself, and I throw back the sliding screens, one after another, through the Dead Space that insulates. I pull back the screens, and before I recognise who it is, I feel a band of muscle pull tightly across my chest.

  Rolfa standing in my doorway.

  She is covered in fur again, and wears virulently coloured clothes. ‘Hullo.’ she says. ‘No trouble to go away and come back if I’m interrupting.’

  Why now? That is the director’s reaction. Yes, I would like to see you, yes I have been meaning to see you, but now is not a good time. Milena runs a distracted hand across her head.

  Well Milena, you have successfully communicated that it is a tremendous inconvenience, but that you are going to make the most forced effort to be gracious.

  ‘Just, just packing,’ says Milena, stiff smile, closed eyes, angry little shakings of the head.

  Perhaps understandably, Rolfa makes no reply.

  ‘How are you, Rolfa?’

  ‘Oh. Not so dusty. Got to keep moving, you know. I won’t stay long.’

  Milena the director is relieved. Mentally she is calculating how long she has to pack.

  ‘It’s lovely to see you,’ says Milena.

  ‘But,’ says Rolfa, supplying the qualification. She is hunched under the arched and lacquered ceilings. She makes the Tarty flat look like the kind of toy you give to a spoiled child. Rolfa is hunched and covered in fur, and she wears a brightly-printed shirt, brightly printed shorts, clean white tennis shoes and a rather rakish hat. It is a man’s hat. She still looks uncomfortable, awkward. My God, she reminds me of Mike.

  ‘Tea?’ Milena offers. Milena has forgotten to ask her in.

  ‘Beer? Whisky? Gin would suffice, if you had some lemon.’ Rolfa shuffles her feet, wiping them on the mat. Her shoes are huge and white and very clean. ‘And just a little morsel to munch, if you could see your way to finding it.’ Rolfa ducks inside the door, and rather awkwardly, removes her hat. Politesse. She strokes the short, bristly crew cut on the top of her head. ‘Needing sustenance. Long boat trip. My God, why did you move all the way out here?’

  Milena doesn’t want to answer. She would have to tell Rolfa about Thrawn. ‘I like the Slump,’ she says. ‘Sorry, but I’m going away, and the only thing I have in the place is tea.’

  ‘Ah well. That at least hasn’t changed.’

  Both of them stand looking at each other. Milena moves first, vaguely walking in the direction of the beanbags. After a step or two forward, Rolfa vaguely stays where she is, near the door.

  ‘You ah, you know that we’re doing a production of the Comedy?’ says Milena. It is possible that Rolfa hasn’t heard. No one at the Zoo has seen or heard of Rolfa for two years.

  ‘Oh yes,’ says Rolfa. ‘Something about space.’

  Is that all you have to say? thinks Milena the director. Did I really get obsessed with this person? She tries to laugh, but it sounds more like a cough.

  ‘It’s going to be a rather major production,’ says the director.

  ‘Golly,’ says Rolfa. She says it coldly, plonking the word down as if it were a brick. She communicates quite effectively that she is not impressed. Rolfa has become sharper. There is an edge to her.

  ‘Well,’ says Milena. ‘They’re sending me up on the Bulge, to try out the lighting.’ Usually people brighten when told this, relieved to be able to ask a string of questions that will have interesting answers. Milena realises immediately it is a tactical conversational error. Rolfa is not brightening with interest.

  ‘I’m going to Antarctica,’ Rolfa says.

  ‘Oh,’ says Milena, brought up for short.

  ‘Good for business. Need the experience if I’m to get on. Thought you might like to know, anyway,’ says Rolfa and beings the process of turning around in the cramped space. She is turning around to leave.

  ‘Rolfa. Wait! Antarctica?’

  Rolfa looks over her shoulder. ‘Seems like the best place for me.’

  ‘But what about your music?’

  ‘Don’t have any music,’ says Rolfa. ‘Poof! Gone.’

  ‘Your singing!’

  ‘My dear woman,’ says Rolfa. That’s it, the gentleness has gone because the sexual attraction has gone, perhaps even been soured. Perhaps to block it, they turn it to distaste. ‘Do you sincerely believe that they are going to cast me as, say, Desdemona in Otello? Or a delicate Chinese heroine in a classical Beijing piece perhaps? Now if there was an opera called David and Goliath in which the part of Goliath had been written for a soprano, perhaps I would have something that could be part of my regular repertoire. Otherwise…’ Another raising up of the hands, and a smile. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘But liede. Song of the Earth, concert singing. Don’t just give up!’ Milena apprehends the waste.

  ‘Why not?’ asks Rolfa.

  ‘Because you’re good,’ says Milena, disappointed, looking away.

  ‘I quite like the idea of going to Antarctica,’ says Rolfa. ‘It’s not all ice. There are some places that are so cold that water has never fallen there. It’s a desert, freeze-dried, just rock and gravel. My mother was in the desert once and she found the corpse of a walrus. Perfectly preserved, nothing to rot it, really. Three hundred miles from the sea.’ She pauses. ‘Well. I am the walrus.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ asks Milena, bleakly.

  ‘No one knows how it got there.’ said Rolfa. ‘And walruses can’t make music.’

  Milena finds she has to sit down. She sits down and screens her face. She wants to protect her face from Rolfa, from the fact of her standing there.

  ‘Rolfa,’ she says without looking at her. ‘Everyone says that the Comedy is a work of genius.’

  ‘Really?’ says Rolfa. ‘Who orchestrated it?’

  ‘The Consensus. But it is your basic music.’

  ‘Then let the Consensus take the credit,’ says Rolfa. ‘They’ve taken everything else.’ And a sputter, a kind of laugh.

  Milena finds anger. Anger she can understand and cope with. ‘Rolfa! You always let yourself be defeated.’

  Rolfa stands looking at her, and the eyes, turning back the anger, seem to say, don’t mistake. This is a different Rolfa. Don’t tell me I am easily defeated. Her eyes narrow and she decides to sit down.

  She sits down, and leans forward on the beanbag to make a point. ‘I appreciate your efforts,’ she says. ‘But you must understand that everything has changed for me.’

  She leans back and seems to relax. She expands. ‘It was quite strange for a while, becoming someone else. But I rather like it now. Father and I get on rather well. I’m his star girl. Revamped his accounting system. I came up with a system of time-sheeting. Everyone’s time is costed. Time is money. May not seem much to you, bu
t I’m proud of it.’ Rolfa shrugs in place, a bit like a boxer.

  Perhaps Milena looks bleak. She is staring at the floor, unhappily. This seems to exasperate Rolfa.

  ‘I’m not that interested in what happens to the Comedy, Milena. It was not seriously written to be performed. I’m impressed that you’ve been able to get it on. But,’ again the sputter. The sputter performs roughly the same function as the shudder-chuckle once did, though the sputter is more purely indignant. ‘But the Comedy is hardly going to be anything new to me.’

  ‘Was it hard to adjust?’

  Rolfa raises her hands behind her head and seems to muse, as if considering something impersonal. ‘It was rather strange, I suppose, yes. I could never be sure which bits had been lopped off, or what would grow back in their place. I positively terrified Zoe and Angela for a while. Called them stupid moos. I found I could not stand women for a while. I had a few drinking buddies, men mostly, and from time to time, rather unexpectedly, I found myself fancying them. It would always be terribly, terribly unexpected, because until just before then, I rather identified with them. They said that it was rather like having one of their mates suddenly make a pass. None of them ever took me up on it, of course.’

  Milena is looking at her wrist. She is looking at the Mice crawling in and out of her skin, patrolling, still asking: where is Rolfa? Where is Rolfa? She wants to put both her hands around Rolfa’s wrist, feel the warmth and the silkiness of the fur. It’s starting. The love is starting, again.

  ‘It was fun wasn’t it?’ says Milena. ‘Those three months.’ Milena’s voice is pleading, frail.

  ‘Oh yes,’ agrees Rolfa, somewhat dismissively. ‘Long time ago now. I seem to recall spending most of my time in a daze in that room of yours. I got horribly demoralised. Sorry about the mess.’

  ‘I didn’t mind,’ whispers Milena.

  ‘I should have done,’ sniffs Rolfa.

  ‘Are you tidy now?’

  ‘Try to be,’ says Rolfa, almost snapping.

  I’m calling to you across a very wide, deep canyon, and the wind is blowing the worlds away. The wind is blowing you away.