by Jonathan Lee
“Hello?” Susie said. “Hello?” She was shaking.
Freya held her. “Best wait here for help.”
Another man coming out of the entrance. He had a beer glass in his hand. The liquid was grey, the same grey powder that coated his shoulders and shoes, like a cape on his shoulders and toecaps on his shoes, and he took a sip which turned into a spit and vomit shot out of his mouth. A woman ran out in her underwear shouting “Bomb”—good, someone should be shouting, good—and then an old man, naked except for one sock, one shoe, emerged from behind a pile of bricks in a way that couldn’t be real. His skin was pink and slack down one side of his body. You could tell he didn’t yet know he was hurt. The not-knowing gave him a kind of power. She closed her eyes and held Susie tighter.
Rumbling building. Soft chatter. Susie was mewing and rocking back and forth. A cloud of grey puffed out from the hotel’s entrance and silently swallowed the moon. Freya watched the cloud move towards her and Susie. It did so with a dreamlike lack of speed. It was dust, not smoke, just dust from a thousand different surfaces and spaces. It was expelled all at once, disgusting dust. It seemed for a moment like it might pick them up, this dust cloud, and drop them somewhere clean and sane.
She was facing the water, coughing and spitting, and the cloud was scribbling out to sea. Some thoughts had settled into place and the first was My dad is in there, oh God. He’s in there, isn’t he? He is.
—
The ceiling groaned and the walls coughed up rubble. Moose winced and covered his head with his hands, saying “Please.” Hot chips of plaster came down through the soup at different speeds. Heavy brickwork followed. Pipes and tiles clattering. Chunks of stone burst lazily around him, sending up more dust, making cruel music, and something sharp and hot found his ear and caused more wetness to flower there. He screamed “No!” as a dull force shoved him in the throat and “No” again as more music consumed him.
The room gloomed and the air was out of him again. He was a whimpering dog now, nothing more. There was a cry from somewhere high as he panted. It faded into the endless whistle in his ears. His leg was pulsing. His eyeball too. He thought of all the gloop inside him, the way it seemed so desperate to get out, and he felt himself going limp—back into darkness, a dog.
He woke to the foul smell of sewage. Through the thick stink of grey he watched the wound on his leg. It shivered. Why? Why had this happened here? Who? His body was convulsing less now. His wheezing was slowing, his airways adjusting.
Paper did a dance. With his weight on his elbow he took a fistful of these whirring papers—they were warm, they were his, they were kind—and now he was stuffing paper into the wound in his leg, paper into flesh and flesh becoming paper. The wound seemed to gurgle less. It had been a good idea.
Break it down. Break this down into steps.
The mottled concrete block that trapped his leg had a promising crack across it. He couldn’t shift a big block, but he could maybe shift two smaller ones. He needed to work the crack and make it material. Please God, I know I have ignored You for years. Let my daughter keep her life. Anyone else I will let You have. It is evil but I will let You have them.
She was outside, was she? He was 90 per cent sure she was outside. As percentages went it was nowhere near enough.
It burned to blink. Through stinging eyes he looked again at all this mess. There would be dozens of other wounded people in this building, people dying or dead or trapped on different floors, alone. Humans, creatures, suffering. It doubled his pain to know this. He started weeping. Could not help it. A gift of life gone. The weeping eased his eyes. A breeze came now and this was lovely, no sulphur scent at all.
Come on, you fool. Come on.
He twisted his body to the left. Paused. Tried to use his elbow as a kind of jack—winch himself backwards, free his leg. Didn’t work.
Freya was outside, definitely. Would be outside in the air, the clean dark air, his daughter in the fine night air outside. Please let her be outside. She was outside. He coughed. Maybe with Marina, in the air outside. He’d seen Freya going out. If she was all right outside then everything else would be all right. All right. Ah, ah, ah.
Vision blurring again, he lifted his good arm. Felt for the crack in the concrete block. Dug his fingers in. Paused for breath. Got his fingers in there, squeezing. Try to burrow. It didn’t work.
The darkness was now more red-brown than grey and something black swept down, a bird or bat he thought, but it clattered in front of him and he saw what it was: a fucking security camera, a ghost from the future.
This time he gave himself ten seconds before stretching his right arm up. His plan was to get a grip on the other concrete block. The one behind him, planet-sized, causing him no bother at all. And none of this was the old hotel’s fault—he would not let anyone attribute blame—and he backed his palm into the block and clutched its upper edge, an awkward angle for his hand. Everything required calculation: every breath, every movement. Well: he could calculate. Calculation was one of his things. He counted to five, panting, waiting for the next wave of pain, and another explosion of rubble came down, the building’s most vicious sneeze yet. When he recovered and got to five he gave himself an extra two. He tried to grip the smooth surface, haul himself back with his fingertips, unwedge his leg. He cried out, “Give me a chance.” His chin was wet. He was grateful that his leg was numb. Lost his grip and the back of his head hit concrete. A howl. It didn’t work. He sensed now that his life was over, that death was the one constant thing, the destination he’d been heading to these last few weeks or years. He moaned and thrashed at this naked unfairness, pulled at his clothes in despair.
Then he thought, No. Just: no. He began to go wild on the concrete block. Began to go out-your-brain mental. He was all clawing, all thumping, all eyeball-surprise. He had an idea of unseen people urging him on. People saying, Come on, Moose, come on. Moose, come on. People thinking, Moose, Moose, I never liked you much, Moose, you’ve got a stupid name and a slow history and you’re a bit of a wet blanket, Moose; you’re a bit strange and soft-spined and irrelevant to what we’re interested in, Moose, but come on now, let’s get it together.
When he tired of his own frantic attack he saw that the crack in the block had opened up. Two sides of stone had relaxed into a roof around his knee. There was a change in the pressure in his leg. An astonishing happiness filled his heart.
He began twisting himself, breathing, oh, oh, oh. He saw his lower leg, the first sign of it, pale and swollen in his shredded trousers, an appalling sight but where was the pain now? Hello, pain, where are you? It had nothing left to attack him with. He howled as he hauled himself back, saw the pale pressed flesh shuffling out from under the concrete. Welcome back, lower leg! A blood rush now. A sense of what survival might mean. Pulling, twisting. Biting his lip. Imagining Father Christmas going ho, ho, ho. The pop of his leather loafer coming off. His foot was attached to his leg. Thank you for this gift, thank you.
He turned himself over. Considered the triangle of light on the other side of the room. Began planning a route through the debris. He was counting out seconds as crocodiles. He was allowing himself three crocodiles with his eyes still scrunched. One crocodile, two crocodiles, three. Who cared if he’d never done anything newsworthy? Day to day he had a daughter. Day to day he had shelter. His daughter would be outside and she would be one hundred per cent fine. He paused to warn the heavens that he would tolerate nothing less. He was in tears again as he crawled.
—
There were firemen now. Sirens. Red lights, blue lights, a confusion of noise. Police shouting “Back from the building! Back!” Women in tattered dresses, men open-mouthed in the night. Chattering teeth and an ambulance.
She tugged at a fireman’s sleeve, needy. “My dad.”
“Breathe!”
“I’m already breathing! My dad’s in there.”
“OK, OK.” The fireman removed his hard hat. The fireman was in fact a firew
oman. Her blonde hair was all balled up at the back and her eyebrows were drawn on with a pencil. Give me information, the firewoman said. His name, what he looks like, the area of the hotel he’d be in.
“Finch,” she said. “Philip. Moose.”
The firewoman shook her head. One lick of hair came loose. She made some notes on a folded piece of yellow paper and said we’re doing what we can, I’m sorry. If you think he was on the ground floor that’s good. She said this and then she put her enormous yellow hat back on, gave a policeman the piece of paper, pointed at Freya and whispered some words. Gone.
A tanned man wearing a baggy jumper and sports shorts was crouching over Susie. He had Twiglet legs. All he said about himself were the words “off duty” and then “I don’t sleep so well.” He was touching Susie’s ankle like he could heal it by the power of thought alone and basically the stage was set for a miracle. In a minute he’d fix everything else. “This will be…” he said. “I’m sorry, this will be…” and Susie whimpered right up until the point where he stuffed a hanky in her mouth. Her eyes went wide with fear. Freya failed to intervene. He took Susie’s foot firm in both hands and twisted it viciously, an awful cracking sound. Susie’s muffled scream; her bared teeth biting down on the hanky; her swelling eyes as it happened. He pulled the hanky out of her mouth, strings of spit bending onto his hand. Susie fought for breath. Bit her lip. It bled. Her body was convulsing. He told her, “Better now, better. You don’t want to leave these things too long.” The foot was facing the right way. Calmly he waved to a paramedic. “I need a hand here, when you have a moment.”
Freya found a woman who looked official. The woman was just shaking her head and muttering, shaking and muttering and waving her papers like papers could help, but as she looked up something jumped in her eyes and she threw her arms around Freya. Freya had never been hugged this way before, with so much warmth and so much need. She felt in fact that up until now she had only ever been held by the edges of who she was. She also felt trapped. She kissed the woman on the nose, fully no idea why, and the woman let go and Freya was free. Ran for it. Tripped over rubble. There were sorry flickers of orange in the air. She tried again to get into the hotel.
“Get back!”
Another long shining line of fire engines leaning into the bends of the road. A barbecue smell and wafts of something toxic. Rubble coming down in groups of two and three, ice cubes from a tray. The sight of a man in flip-flops, vomiting. A vigilant old woman, silver hair shooting forward from the crown, poking at a camera lens with her rubber-tipped stick. Dust and a dozen people coughing. A fireman saying, “Get back. Get back.”
An old man approached her. “Might you perhaps help me find my wife?”
“I—”
“Please? We’ve been married thirty years.”
A woman said, “God. Skipper! Did you see my dog? Skipper!”
“I’m sorry,” the old man said.
“Are you sure? Skipper! He’s a dachshund. Skipper!”
“Sorry,” Freya said.
“Skipper! Skip!”
“I’m very sorry,” the man said. “I’m looking for my wife. We’ve been married thirty years.”
“Skip!” the woman called. “Skipper! Skip!”
Surfer John found her. He was covered head to foot in filth. She told him she was completely done with hugs. He said, “You’re in shock.” She said, “Irrespective.” She said, “You’ve got to help me find my dad.” He stood there looking dumb and kind, not quite a lemon but a definite citrus.
Groups were forming. A minister and his wife were pacing the pavement, the wife wearing a necklace of unaffected pearls. A bathrobe, a pair of slippers. She was saying, “I will not be flapped.” Someone else said, “The Lady is secure, the Lady is secure.” A tiny cheer rose up into the neutral night sky. Two dozen people in nightclothes. Firemen shouting “back back back.” Felt like every emergency vehicle in the United Kingdom was here now. Ladders extending up from fire engines. Men in huge clothing climbing onto balconies, vanishing into the building. Who would do this? Where was her dad?
John Redwood from the thingy unit, the Policy Unit, bottom right corner of Moose’s “Briefing Bios” document; John Redwood pacing around saying, “After all that, I’ve left the bloody speech in there!” Another guy saying, “We need to cut the Kinnock stuff. Where’s Ronnie um? We need to yes recast in case of—” People seemed to fall into two camps, the panicked and the merely inconvenienced. Another dinosaur rumble from the building. “Back, back, get back.”
A fireman came out carrying a box of teacups, set it down on the ground and ran back in. A paramedic said, “Water from the hose. Eyebaths.” People staggering blind, rubbing at their eyes, she saw them now, saw them quietly forming a queue. She was so grateful for this minor demonstration of order. She wiped the tears from her eyes.
Sir Keith Joseph was wearing silk pyjamas and a fine patterned dressing gown. He looked miraculously clean sitting there on a red box of government papers. He was humming and rocking very slightly from side to side.
“Have you seen Daniel, is he staying here?”
“Have you seen Amy, was she staying here?”
“There’s coffee and wine in the Metropole, bar opened, Blitz spirit.”
“Metropole evacuated, another bomb.”
“Get her back to Downing Street.”
“There’s no other bomb.”
“She won’t go.”
“Fuck’s sake.”
“Skipper!”
“Police stations.”
“She’s safe.”
“Have you seen my wife?”
“Second device.”
“Hospital.”
“What to do?”
“We’ve been married thirty years.”
No one wanted to help her find her dad. Surfer John talked to the policemen. They wanted names of staff, a floor plan.
A cat ran across the road in several smooth leaps, ears pinned back, body lengthening and lowering as it crept under a car—Barbara. Her tail disappearing, only the yellow eyes aglow.
Glass shattered.
“Get back!”
Voices and torches, dust, luminous jackets, yellow tape, bathrobes, dust, police, cameras, lights, dust. A helicopter had begun to hover in the sky.
—
Dan’s mother had been taken in by Mrs. Whelan: cocoa and a bath. When he walked into the living room he found her sitting on the sofa. Books on the shelves had been arranged according to their colours, yellows blending into greens, the Whelans’ OCD thing. Outside, smoke still poured from his home.
He stood in front of her. “Ma,” he said. She complained and leaned to the left. The TV was in the corner, murmuring in black and white. She said she was trying to watch it.
He sat beside her and turned the volume up. Minutes and minutes of pointless shite before the newscaster said Mrs. Thatcher had survived. The news emptied Dan’s head. He felt only relief. He would fall into history’s footnotes, become one of its unseen failures. The newscaster’s next revelation: Alistair McAlpine was talking to Marks & Spencer about opening early, to sell clean clothes to those “affected.” Cut to Thatcher saying the conference would go ahead as planned, no delay to the speeches. Cut to a picture of Marks & Spencer. Marks & Spencer! A great British success story was piecing itself together. A nausea began to swell in his stomach. Cut to the Grand Hotel still standing, a chunk torn out. Cut to a doctor standing outside the Royal Sussex hospital, curly grey hair. He said the number of dead could not yet be ascertained, the rescue operation continues, so do the efforts to treat the wounded. The word “wounded” crawled inside Dan. The word “dead” did nothing. He turned the sound down, looked around the room. Through the window the sky was such a smooth black that it seemed a thing he ought to be able to feel, a blackboard or a piece of slate.
He tried to put his arm around his mother. She moved away. Did not even lift her chin from her hands. “Come here,” he said. “Come here.”
His mother shook her head. Three or four women who’d been in the kitchen came into the living room now. One said, with undisguised excitement in her voice, “She’s lost everything, Dan. Give her time.”
He stood and said no. “Half the building’s being saved.”
“What?” his mother said.
“Ma, there’s no fresh fire out there now, only smoke. We can rebuild.”
“Come on, Dan.”
“We can. Some of the belongings, Dad’s things, they’ll be salvageable. And Jones’s home is mostly OK. Don’t mistake me, these people will pay.”
She shook her head and pinched the skin of her forearm. “These people,” she said.
“We could have lost more, I’m saying.”
She laughed again. “Who are you talking about, Dan? Who is it you’re calling ‘these people?’ These people are the only people here.”
He began to explain. She shook her head, did not want to learn. His skin still tingled from all the ash that had fallen upon him. His clothes stank of smoke.
“Some things,” he said. “Some of it we’ll get cleaned up and will be fine. We’ll hold on to some of it, we will. Things aren’t as bad as you think, Ma.”
Slack skin, liver spots, eyes greyer than before. She seemed to have aged ten years in the last two hours. The other women in the room were whispering. She said, “Things aren’t as bad as you think, Dan? True. Things are worse than you think. Being general, they’re much, much worse.”
“No.”
“Catch yourself on, Dan. You no longer look like my son.”
He tried not to linger on this.
“Insurance,” one of the women said, as if insurance covered families like his in neighbourhoods like this.
Kind Mrs. Whelan arrived bearing a teapot and an assortment of mugs. She settled her tray on the table, touched it twice.
His mother spoke again. “I didn’t know what was happening, Catty.” A nickname unused for years. “A brick came through the bedroom. I was watching the little TV in the bedroom about the bomb and the brick—a brick, you know? I mean I was expecting something but. The brick came through like this. I looked out the back. A brick like they knew. The garden was having a fire. I took a couple of the half-good cookbooks and went out like this for the door.”