The Casualties

by Nick Holdstock

  However, just because that tragic, awful loss of life was ultimately a good thing does not mean it was willed or caused by any entity, force, or power. Though it was, in many ways, a perfect solution to the problems of early twenty-first-century Earth (though one that no government or supranational body could advocate, let alone accomplish), if there was some entity or force capable of such a thing, why had he/she/it/they waited so long before intervening in humanity’s affairs? Why had they let things deteriorate to the point where only the deaths of billions of people could effect meaningful change?

  Most Believers’ explanations are versions of the idea that only a catastrophic loss of life could teach us the lessons we needed to learn. The deaths of millions had proved insufficient. There was no war we could not forget, no famine we could not ignore.

  This is probably true. But there is still no need to posit an invisible hand hurling those meteors. It could have been, as I already said, a lucky accident. I also wonder what kind of warped mind feels it necessary to destroy two billion people in order to unite the remaining five billion, when presumably it could have just as easily restored the ozone layer, cleaned up the seas, and crashed the financial markets so badly they would never recover. Admittedly, this entity would have had to do far more if those two billion people were still alive—such as remove our ability to digest meat, stop air travel for several decades, eradicate corporations, form a nonhierarchical world government, and mix the populations of different countries so thoroughly that there were almost no places with dominant ethnic groups and ultimately, no countries, at least not in the classic we-are-one-nation-and-everyone-else-must-die sense of the word. But for a quasi-omnipotent being, this probably wouldn’t have been more than a few hours’ work.

  But if this hypothetical, all-powerful entity were responsible for our collective salvation, then it is only a small logical step to conclude that it was responsible for everything that happened during those final days. That it chose to kill the good people and beautiful trees of Socotra. That it put Mr. Asham on a plane to safety but not his wife and child. The motivations for this are unfathomable. Why, for instance, was Toby freed from his great hunger when the end was so near? What was the point of saving him from his mother if this reprieve was to be temporary?

  The only answer I can accept is that it made the people who cared for Toby happy. His mother was delighted; only the most twisted, unfit parents take no pleasure in their child’s achievements. Her relief must have been twofold. Toby had done the impossible, and she would not need to commit an unforgivable act.

  Sinead was almost as pleased. She had spent most of her year with Toby trying to achieve this. Sitting with him during his TV programmes, stopping him from going through the rubbish, trying to keep him distracted. Spending hundreds of hours reading to him about the worm that ate and ate because it wanted to fly. Telling him, over and over, that the worm in his tummy had to be starved so it would leave, so it could eat, so it could be a butterfly.

  Given how much time and effort she had spent, it was entirely understandable that Sinead took most of the credit (even if it was not down to her, but Toby’s body, or perhaps that invisible hand). At the end of March, when Toby’s weight was down to 130 kilograms his mother threw her arms around Sinead and sobbed. Never had she seemed less like an old witch.

  That month Sinead’s pay packet contained an additional two hundred pounds. She used it to buy new clothes and the different drugs she was thinking of using on Sam. She wanted to know how he’d be feeling when under their influence. Did Toby’s transformation make her happy? Was it like a shiny ring on her finger she could not take her eyes off?

  When I think of Caitlin’s many troubles—her skin problems, her infatuation with Sam—there is at least the consolatory knowledge that she still found pleasure, or at least escape, in books or walks by the canal. Her unhappiness was an understandable reaction to having a physical disfigurement in an incredibly superficial culture; without it, I am certain she would have been no more unhappy than anyone else.

  Sinead didn’t have this kind of release. She did not read, and her musical taste was limited to what she had listened to at school. Like many people, she watched a lot of television, but in a more indiscriminate fashion than most. She had no female friends, and her relationships with the men she knew were primarily physical. She must, of course, have had those small moments of euphoric joy that everyone has privately, when she glimpsed the sea between buildings, or got in a bath so perfectly hot it made her bones give thanks. Even Mrs. Maclean and the sour Mr. Campbell must have had such interludes, though it would be naïve (and perhaps insulting) to claim these brief moments made their lives less miserable.

  So there is all the more reason for hoping Toby’s transformation made Sinead happy. I can imagine her doing some mundane task like tidying Toby’s room, or vacuuming the lounge, feeling tired and somewhat bored, worrying that Sam was talking to some unconventionally beautiful girl from Denmark or Croatia with charmingly inflected English, a compelling neurosis, and very firm, high breasts. In her diary she imagined them fucking, sitting in cafés, holding hands and kissing as they walked past her.

  But there must have been times when she looked over and saw Toby reading quietly, and this derailed her train of thought. Perhaps the knowledge that she had helped him was a small, bright thing.

  What Toby thought about losing so much weight is difficult to say. Hunger had ruled his life for so long; what was it like to lose that obsession? To have so many seconds not coloured by want? The people of Comely Bank would probably ask us the same thing.

  Although Toby would have struggled with such questions, there was no doubt how losing so much weight made him feel. Everyone could see the change. He’d had a bounding enthusiasm; his laughter had been panting, delighted, prone to induce hiccups. In place of this joyful, swollen child was an overweight man in his thirties. He was like one of those patients who has drastic, life-saving surgery that is deemed a great success, delighting relatives, friends, and doctors—everyone except the patient. They feel so drained, so hacked at, they’re unsure it was worthwhile. There was an air of loss around Toby, and with good reason. Our body is the world we know best; its changes are supposed to be gradual. In three months he had lost a third of his. He must have felt like a different person.

  13. The Trial of Samuel Clark

  APRIL WAS NOT CRUEL THAT year. The weather was unusually mild. There was little wind to bully the trees, so the blossoms stayed on their branches. The flowers had a subtle fragrance that entered people’s homes and made them long to be outside. Bedding and carpets, rugs and mats, curtains, cushions, pillows, and blinds: all were beaten, cleaned, made fresh. Dusty objects that had been kept for years were casually thrown out. Lawns were cut, trees pruned, many seeds got planted. It was a time of great energy and purpose, of starting afresh, and it was all quite pointless. In four months their bright, clean homes would cease to exist.

  This was also the time of year when most people, either on their own, as a couple, or as a family, decided where and when they would go on holiday. Of all the choices they made that spring, this was the only one that mattered.

  The notion of “having a holiday” was of great importance to these people. They wanted to relax and feel nothing except the hot sun on their face, a cold beer fizzing in their throat. They wanted to spend two weeks without responsibilities.

  And yet this was somehow not enough. They also wanted to eat new food, see incredible landscapes, feel the push and spark of being in a strange crowd.

  Unsurprisingly, most people’s holidays did not satisfy these contradictory goals. They got bored or started to crave the familiar. Even those who had a happy time felt that they had failed to escape.

  I think this is where we differ from people back then. We do not place such a burden of expectation on our trips. Last year I spent an enjoyable week amongst the limestone pillars near Vang Vieng, walking or sitting to sketch and rest my old legs. A
t the end of each day, I returned to my guesthouse and ate a simple meal, then sat and talked with the other diners till my eyes grew heavy. At no point did I forget that I was far from home. The green curry was thinner; the insects were larger; people’s Mandarin sometimes had a French inflection. But it did not feel bizarre, exotic, or as people used to say, foreign. I doubt there are any places that feel like that now, with the exception of a few Arctic towns. These days we are all so mixed together: The only thing more foolish than speaking of nations is to speak of race.

  In 2017 the people of Comely Bank (and Scotland, and for that matter, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, to give it its full, bloated title) chose the same kinds of destinations as they had in previous years. I am sure they had good reasons. The exchange rate between the British pound and the currency of their destination was good; they had been before, and liked it; many of the local people could speak English. Unfortunately ninety percent of these individuals, couples, and families made the wrong decision. In July they went to Barcelona, Paris, Rome, or Athens. They went to New York or Los Angeles.

  It should come as no surprise that few of Comely Bank’s eccentrics had holiday plans. The last time Mrs. Maclean had left Edinburgh was to go to her sister’s funeral forty years before. Sinead was not going to risk going away, not when she was so close to her goal. Trudy was as trapped as ever. Sean and Rita seemed rooted to their bench. As for Alasdair, he was too busy enjoying four-hour baths in tepid water laced with urine and sage.

  Only two people in Comely Bank had plans to go away. One was Toby, though strictly speaking, it was his mother who made the decision. She had a brother in Hong Kong she had not seen since he had visited Comely Bank fifteen years before. That visit was cut short after three days, following an unfortunate incident in which Toby bit his uncle so hard he needed stitches. The wound was on a hand that was holding a sausage. He had been teasing the boy.

  Evelyn had never expected to be able to get on a plane with Toby: How could he behave himself in a confined space in which so many people were eating? After booking the flight for July 26, Evelyn opened all the windows of the house, then played a scratchy vinyl record of a woman singing in a voice so joyous and loud that it was almost a scream. She turned the volume up so high it could be heard at the other end of the street. As she stood at the window, looking out over the river, she must have breathed in the scent of blossoms and thought she was finally free.

  A few days later Caitlin also booked a flight. Hers was a one-way ticket. Its destination had not been part of the long list of places she had first considered. Although there were many places that sounded good—Istanbul, Kyoto, and Vienna were her top three—in each case her enthusiasm quickly waned. When she pictured herself walking down their streets it seemed absurd. She would be as out of place, as much a freak, as she was in Comely Bank. The only improvement would be not understanding their shouts of scorn and disgust.

  In the end she decided to go to the travel agent, tell them how much she wanted to spend, and let them decide. It didn’t matter where she ended up. So long as she left Comely Bank, she would be leaving Sam. In a new place, in her new home, she would face many of the same problems (and probably some new ones). But by virtue of living in a different flat, having a different job, shopping in different places, making new sounds with her mouth, she could not be entirely the same person, which meant she had a chance of being happy. She would wear different clothes (smarter, not secondhand), exercise more (she would get a bicycle), and alter her appearance (either dye her hair or cut it very short). She would also change her name. “Caitlin” had lived in Comely Bank; “Stella” (or perhaps “Yasmin”) would live in Trinidad or wherever.

  Such changes of identity are not uncommon amongst Survivors. No one knows how many changed their names; my guess is thirty percent. When asked why, most Survivors say they wanted to begin again. When they talk of wanting a new life, it is barely a metaphor. I hope it does not sound melodramatic to suggest that losing everyone and everything you have known is a kind of death. But it is still a metaphor. However much they grieved and wished they were dead, the fact is that they lived. But therein lay the problem. It made no sense for Julie from Paris, or Alan from London, to be lying on a bed in a room on a different continent while their houses and the streets they were on, and the districts those streets were in, and the cities that contained the districts, were only a crater. Alan and Julie were out of place, and always would be, because their places no longer existed.

  Some have said that these identity changes were an attempt to avoid the truth, a way for Survivors to pretend their loss had not occurred. To which I can only reply that this was something beyond even human denial.

  When Caitlin told the travel agent what she wanted he showed no surprise. He looked at the computer screen, clicked twice with the mouse, then said, “What about Egypt?”

  She had not considered there or anywhere else in the region. Like most people, even supposedly well-educated people, she regarded it as a dangerous place where people were perpetually angry in the name of God. She thought of women covered head to toe in black cloth, their eyes looking out a rectangular strip like the viewing window in a prison door.

  “That sounds great,” she said.

  Ten minutes later she was walking down a street that now felt unfamiliar. Though the shops, cars, and faces looked outwardly the same, they seemed provisional, less solid, a draft of themselves. It was as if she were struggling to remember them from far ahead in the future.

  Most of Comely Bank’s residents had these dreams of escape. They said, “When I have a little more money,” or “When the children are grown.” They said, “After Mother dies.” They said these things and meant them, and they were good excuses. But the only way to leave was hurting those they loved. It would be like telling them they were dispensable.

  The only person Caitlin thought she’d hurt by leaving was Sam, and this was far from certain. Even if he was hurt, it wouldn’t be her fault, because he was the reason she had to go. Of course, she didn’t want to hurt him. He hadn’t done anything wrong; he just hadn’t done what she wanted. The important thing was that she tell him about her departure. That way, if he needed to say something to her—such as his honest reaction to the news that she was leaving forever—he would have a chance to do so. Sometimes it was only at the very last moment that people knew what they really felt.

  He was tidying the shelves when she entered. The only customer was a woman in a tweed skirt at the back of the shop. Sam turned, saw Caitlin, and smiled. “Hey,” he said, and it was amazing how the sight of him, his voice, could still make her feel as if some wave of energy were burning through her.

  “I have good news,” she said, then wished she hadn’t said good. Big news would have been all right. Good was insensitive.

  “What is it?”

  “I’m going to Egypt.”

  “Oh. When?”

  “July 27th.”

  “Wow. For how long?”

  This was the awkward part. She couldn’t say forever; it would sound like bragging. As if she were presenting this as a fait accompli (which of course it was). The polite thing, the friendly thing, was to pretend that the decision was not set in stone (although it was) and that she therefore wanted his opinion.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “Definitely for a while.” Which struck just the right note. It showed him her conviction without being final.

  “Any idea what you’ll do?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. His question irritated her. There was something patronising about any idea. It implied that there was no possibility of her having some amazing job already organised.

  “You could always teach English.”

  “I don’t want to teach. It’s boring.”

  “Oh, you used to, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it might be less boring doing that in Cairo than Edinburgh. I mean, how—”

  “It
’s all the same.”

  She didn’t want to hear any more. Sam was speaking as if leaving were not an achievement. He clearly did not regard it as a big event, and it was obvious why. He had been in Comely Bank, in his shop, for so much longer than she had, and yet she was the one who was leaving. It was fine for him to be jealous, that she understood. But there was something pathetic about him trying so hard to sound casual. So what if he was good-looking, clever, incredibly well read: He had done nothing with his life. He hadn’t been to university. He hadn’t even travelled. If she came back in twenty years he would still be there. He’d have grey hair and inch-thick glasses and be horribly stooped. He’d be one of those broken old men who inhabits secondhand bookshops the way a bear, when it is dying, will quietly wait in its cave.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, and she could not answer. She was getting too angry.

  “Nothing. I have to go.”

  “Wait,” he said, but she did not. Stupidly, she was crying.

  * * *

  CAITLIN WAS RIGHT: Sam had achieved almost nothing. At twenty-nine he was still a sixteen-year-old boy who thought that reasons mattered. Despite having read many novels that featured men and women in various stages of love—not to mention all the “real” feelings in the letters and diaries—he remained emotionally naïve. He let things with Sinead and Caitlin get to the point where they were both crazy. Although he hadn’t led them on, he had also never told them he wasn’t interested. Perhaps this would have made no difference; it could not have hurt to try.