Children of the Dust

by Louise Lawrence

  Then she went to the house, loaded the shopping trolley with bottles of plums, gooseberries, strawberries and apple pulp, and entered the boarded-up darkness of the living room. There had been no need for her to go in there, Veronica had said, but she had found a box of cartridges on the kitchen table and she needed the gun. It was under the sheet, clutched in Farmer Arkright’s hand. Dead fingers gripped and let go as Sarah pulled it free. She did not feel anything, neither revulsion nor pity. For Catherine’s sake she would do what she had to, thieve from the living or the dead.

  Sarah mashed potatoes with a tin of Buster’s dog food, made rissoles for dinner and set them to fry. They would have bottled plums for pudding, she decided, or maybe not. They had had fruit every day since Sarah had visited the farm and William was complaining of pains in his tummy. She opened a tin of creamed rice pudding instead, spooned it into their unwashed breakfast dishes and squirted chocolate sauce over the top.

  Veronica came shuffling out to empty the commode, clung to the doors and walls for support and made her way into the garden. Her teeth were broken and her head was a mass of oozing sores. Her eyes hurt in the light. A few hours ago she had vomited blood, but still she insisted on doing what she could, rinsed the commode in the rain barrel and came back inside.

  ‘William has diarrhoea,’ she said.

  ‘He’s eaten too many plums,’ said Sarah.

  ‘He’s sick,’ said Veronica.

  Sarah looked at her.

  ‘I’ll look after him,’ she said.

  Maybe Veronica had needed to hear her say it one last time, for that night when William and Catherine were asleep she said she was leaving. She was just a burden, she said, and no more use. Dumbly in the candlelight Sarah watched her take some tablets from the bottle in the sideboard drawer. It was better this way, Veronica said. Better for all of them. And she was no longer afraid of death. It would be a relief. And the God Sarah believed in had no more plans for her.

  Sarah nodded. This was the moment they had both faced up to long ago and she did not try to stop her. It was not even terrible. The woman who had married her father had become in the end her only friend and Sarah would never see her again. But the time was right and there was nothing left to say, not even goodbye. Maybe later she would cry and feel the grief but now she simply accepted the end of Veronica as soon she would accept William’s and her own. After so much suffering there could be no sadness in letting someone go.

  ‘Will you be all right?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘I’ll go to the church,’ Veronica said.

  And closed the door.

  It was the last Sarah saw of her, blue human eyes and a face covered with sores, turning to God. She snuffed out the candle and lay on her mattress on the floor. The room seemed empty now, a dark space where once Veronica had been. She could feel the loneliness like a pain. But by morning it had receded to a dull ache and Veronica was just a memory, a person who belonged to a green lost world and was nothing to do with now.

  Mummy had gone for a walk, she told William and Catherine, and she did not know when she would be back. They asked no questions. Perhaps they too had gone beyond grieving or caring. They had dog meat rissoles for breakfast and William said his tummy ache was better. But there were sores on his skin and his eyes watered in the gloomy kitchen light. Death seemed to stare at Sarah from William’s face, as if it were the only thing left in a world that had once been full of life. She wanted to do something, say something that would make him happy.

  ‘Shall we go for a walk?’ she suggested.

  He shook his head.

  ‘I don’t like it outside,’ William said.

  ‘And I have to stay and look after my Barbie doll,’ said Catherine.

  ‘We might find some tins,’ said Sarah.

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ said William.

  Sarah gave him the gun. Veronica had managed to load it and all William had to do was pull the trigger. He was to fire it, she said, if anyone came to the house. And she went out alone.

  A chill wind blew across the darkened sky, whirled dead leaves from the trees and whipped up the dust, covered the tracks of shoes on the road. The wind that sang through the silence was the only sound and Sarah shivered. Sores around her mouth cracked and bled and small pains cramped her stomach. She had to find someone alive, someone for Catherine. But the houses around the common were blast-damaged and empty and from the village she could smell the death fires burning. Not in the church, or chapel, or the school would she find Catherine a home.

  Sarah kept to the small lanes around the village outskirts, checking the isolated houses. They were all abandoned, and all she gained were a few tins of food. Dark wooded hills stretched out across the miles showing no light or life. And the July cold intensified as she headed back towards home.

  A few drops of rain began to fall, pock-marks on the dust, as she went to Harrowgate Farm to check on the calves. The barricade was still there, blocking the haybarn door, and when she peered through the crack she saw the calves were alive, shadowy animals moving restlessly within the dark warm womb of a future world, waiting for the child that would claim them, waiting for Catherine.

  Rain swept across the barren land, black and icy, leaving its gritty traces on Sarah’s face and hands. Pools of mud formed on the track, rivulets among the dust. Maybe the fields would grow again. Maybe it would wash the darkness from the skies. Pains gripped her stomach as she ran for shelter in Brookside Cottage, but it did not matter. She had only one thing left to do. She stole the pram that had once belonged to Amanda Spencer, filled it with toys . . . Action men, Star Wars space ships, battery-run robots, a sheriffs outfit and six-shooter gun . . . everything belonging to Robert that William had envied. He could play with them, Sarah thought. And perhaps he would be happy before he died.

  How long they had lived without Veronica Sarah did not know. Days passed quickly even though every minute seemed like an eternity of time. The sores on her face festered and spread. Like William she suffered from diarrhoea and sickness, and not even Catherine could bear to live in the stinking vileness of the living room. Sarah rebuilt her house in the kitchen and removed the barricade from the living-room window. It let in the air and twilight and the gathering cold. Just for a few more days they lived like that but then William vomited blood and she knew they must go.

  She must take Catherine away. She did not know where but it had to be now, on the last morning, whilst she still had strength enough to travel. The baby’s pram stood packed and ready and William lay on the settee wrapped in blankets and shivering with fever, too ill to move. His eyelids were swollen and weeping, his golden hair fallen and gone. Sarah knelt beside him, feeling the heat of his forehead beneath her hand.

  ‘Catherine and I are going for a walk,’ she said.

  William nodded, not really caring.

  ‘We might be gone for a long time,’ Sarah went on. ‘All day, perhaps. You’ll have to stay here, William. I’ve opened a tin of pineapple chunks. They’re here on the floor, right where you can reach them. Do you understand?’

  ‘Will you come back?’ William asked feebly.

  ‘Just as soon as I can,’ Sarah promised.

  Catherine stood in the doorway, unrecognizable in the torn garbage bag suit. She had a handkerchief tied over her nose and mouth and a plastic bag with air-holes over the top. She did not yet know that somewhere out in the dark desolate world Sarah would abandon her.

  ‘You can pull the shopping trolley,’ Sarah told her.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

  ‘We’ll know when we get there,’ said Sarah.

  She turned the pram and heaved it through the doorway. Saucepans, dangling from the sides, rattled and banged. There were shoes and slippers and Wellington boots on the underneath rack, and the seeds and rifle and tins of food were hidden inside beneath the jumble of Catherine’s clothes. Blankets and a sleeping bag were piled on top and covered with polythene torn from the kitchen window. Not
hing showed of any value except for the half-empty bag of dog biscuits.

  ‘And that’s all we’ve got if anyone asks,’ she told Catherine. ‘Just dog biscuits. Remember that.’

  ‘Are we going to look for Mummy?’ Catherine asked.

  ‘No,’ said Sarah. ‘We’re going to look for somewhere better to live.’

  Dragging the shopping trolley Catherine followed behind. It was loaded with bottles of fruit that chinked in the silences, with a nightdress, sponge bag and Barbie doll riding on top. Wheels made tracks in the sodden dust and a damp wind blew in their faces. The sky grew darker, an eerie gloom that swallowed the shapes of trees and houses, a wintry cold that chilled them to the bone. They were heading into it, a freezing journey that had no foreseeable end.

  ‘I’m cold,’ said Catherine. ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘We’ll go home afterwards,’ said Sarah.

  She hoped they would not meet any people, but there was no one alive on this side of the village so they had to go past the church. There was a fire in the graveyard with dark shapes moving around it, and someone leaning on the lich gate watching them approach, a man coming towards them through the morning darkness and a woman following behind. It was the first fear Sarah had felt since the bombs had fallen.

  ‘What’s in that pram?’ the man asked.

  ‘Things,’ said Sarah. ‘We’re looking for somewhere to live.’

  ‘Food!’ said the man.

  ‘No,’ said Sarah.

  ‘Only dog biscuits,’ Catherine said fearfully.

  The woman shuffled forward.

  ‘I know you, don’t I? It’s Sarah, isn’t it? Sarah Harnden from across the common. You know Sarah, Ted? Veronica’s daughter. She came to us the other night.’

  ‘Dead,’ said the man. ‘Veronica’s dead.’

  ‘And I’m Mrs Porter,’ said the woman.

  Sarah remembered Mrs Porter. She had been fat once, but now she was thin, bald and shivering in the wind, dying like Sarah was. Catherine was crying because the man had said Veronica was dead, and Mrs Porter wanted them both to come into the church where everyone else was living. But Sarah had to get away from them. She had to take Catherine away.

  ‘I’ll wheel the pram,’ said the man.

  ‘You don’t understand!’ Sarah said desperately. ‘My sister isn’t sick! She’s not sick at all! I have to find somewhere for her to live, a person, a place. She can’t stay with us!’

  Mrs Porter stared at Catherine’s hidden face.

  ‘I think we should let them go,’ she told the man.

  ‘They’ve got food!’ he insisted.

  ‘Didn’t you hear what she said? The child isn’t sick. That food is for her.’ Mrs Porter turned to Sarah. ‘You go, my dear. You take your sister away. Ted won’t stop you. He’s not a bad man.’

  Ted spat on the road as Sarah passed.

  ‘He won’t help you!’ he said bitterly. ‘He’ll turn you away, same as he turned us away. And all he’ll give you is lettuce!’

  The saucepans jangled, and the fruit bottles chinked in the shopping trolley as Sarah and Catherine walked away along the street of abandoned houses. The fire in the churchyard faded behind them and the man’s words echoed in Sarah’s head. He would not help them, the man had said, and all he would give them was lettuce. Who had he meant?

  ‘I don’t want to go!’ wept Catherine. ‘I don’t want to go and live with that horrible man! Don’t make me go, Sarah! I want to stay with you and William!’

  Johnson, thought Sarah. It had to be Johnson. She remembered going there last summer with her father, driving along a track through the woods. His place was a forestry lodge which had been converted to a smallholding, fields growing hay grass and string beans, and a dozen glasshouses. She remembered seeing goats in a paddock and a stream with a sheep-dip not far away. They had bought three boxes of pansies from a bearded man who had said his name was Johnson, and stayed to talk. He said he had moved there from London five years ago. Opted out of the rat-race, he said. It was miles from anywhere, and his wife had left him, and he had sold his produce at the local market. There were no mains services, just an electric generator and septic tank drainage, and his water was pumped from an underground well. Veronica had said she was not surprised his wife had left him, living in such primitive isolated conditions.

  ‘He shouted at me!’ sobbed Catherine. ‘He shouted rude words and told us to go away! All we did was swing on his gate! We never meant to let the sheep in his field! I don’t like him, Sarah!’

  ‘You’ll like him this time,’ Sarah said.

  Spasms of pain racked her body as she pushed the pram down the long road past Ryelands Guest House, and up the hill towards the next village. Sleet lashed her face and the dark woods waited and there were two miles to go before they came to a turning on the right. And although Catherine cried, Sarah could smile. This was how things were meant to be and Johnson was part of the plan.

  Once off the road it was hard walking. The pram jolted over loose stones and the shopping trolley leaked crimson juice from a broken bottle of plums. Fallen trees and broken branches blocked the track and they had to detour through mounds of dusty undergrowth. Sarah was weak and sweating with the effort and twice on the way she had to stop to be sick. Then from the high empty hill-top where the trees had been felled she saw the smallholding below, glasshouses bright with electric light and pale smoke rising from the cottage chimney.

  ‘I don’t want to go there,’ Catherine said bleakly.

  ‘I know,’ said Sarah. ‘But there’s nothing else I can do. And he’ll look after you, you see.’

  Johnson came to meet them at the bottom of the track, the shape of a man in a navy blue overall, lean and tall in the twilight. An improvised helmet with a curved plastic visor concealed his face and he carried a shotgun. He had survived like Catherine because he took no chances, and the rifle was aimed at Sarah’s head.

  ‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ Johnson said quietly. ‘But I’ll kill you if I have to. I can give you lettuces. Take them and go.’

  Sarah pushed Catherine towards him.

  ‘I’ll go,’ she said. ‘But I’ll leave Catherine here. We’ve taken good care of her. She isn’t sick and she’s able to work for her keep.’

  Johnson stared and hesitated.

  Then lowered the gun.

  ‘I’ve been waiting for this,’ he said.

  ‘You’ll take her?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘I’m not much good with kids,’ said Johnson. ‘Never had any of my own, but I’ll take her. What did you say her name was?’

  ‘Catherine,’ said Sarah.

  Johnson nodded and opened the gate.

  ‘Bring your shopping trolley, little lady.’

  Alone, without Sarah, Catherine crossed the threshold of Johnson’s land and stood forlornly beside him. Live chickens scratched in a nearby glasshouse, and there were goats and sheep in another. Others contained lettuce, and cucumbers, and unripe tomatoes, trays of seedlings and bedding flowers. The blast had not damaged them. The glass was plastic and the hills formed a sheltering amphitheatre all around. It was a good place in which to survive. Sarah parked the pram against the dry stone wall.

  ‘You’d better have Catherine’s things,’ she said.

  ‘There’s seeds too, and all the tinned food we had left, and a twelve-bore shotgun.’

  ‘A gun,’ said Johnson. ‘You’ve got a gun?’

  ‘One like yours,’ said Sarah.

  Johnson laughed.

  ‘This gun’s not real,’ he said. ‘It only works by fooling people. I carved it out of wood the week after the bombs went off, and painted it to look like real. Real enough to frighten people away anyhow.’

  ‘They told us in the village,’ Sarah informed him.

  Johnson sighed.

  ‘What else could I do? I had to turn those poor devils away. I don’t have enough food to feed the whole wretched population. Enough for the living maybe, but not for the
dying. If food would have saved them I would have given it willingly, believe me.’

  Sarah did believe him.

  Johnson was a good man.

  ‘Will you come and stay with your sister?’ he asked her.

  Sarah shook her head.

  ‘I have to go home,’ she said. ‘My little brother is sick. I see you have outbuildings here. There are five live calves at Harrowgate Farm waiting to be collected. Nobody knows they’re there. I barricaded the barn door to keep them safe but I think you should have them. You can use Farmer Arkright’s Land Rover, and there’s diesel in a tank by the implement shed.’

  A squall of icy rain came sweeping down from the hills, ran like tears down Johnson’s face as he lifted his eyes to the sky. He said, if he had never believed in God before he believed in Him now. And this was the beginning of a brave new world. Sarah shivered and pulled up the hood of her duffle coat. She had to go, she said, and looked at the garbage bag figure of Catherine for the last time. Johnson rested his hand on the child’s shoulder.

  ‘I’ll look after her,’ he said. ‘I’ll teach her to grow. We’ll build a world from the dust, she and I. It won’t be easy, but we’ll do it. A moral society, based on human decency, free people, co-operating without violence, better than the old. There’s a nuclear winter coming on, cold like we have never known. But the glasshouses are centrally heated. There’s plenty of wood. The well water’s good. If I can get diesel enough to keep the generator going — if I can scavenge enough hay and concentrates to keep the animals alive . . . if I can keep the green plants growing . . . we’ll make it. We’ll make it anyway, your sister and me.’

  Sarah coughed and smiled. Bright blood flecked the back of her hand and she did not worry. Johnson was part of the plan, a man with a vision which she herself would never share. Her part was over, her purpose played out. She had lived for Catherine and now she gave Catherine to him. Finally satisfied Sarah turned away, leaving man and child together in the rainy darkness.