Maggie Gee - The Ice People

There were voices, statistics, numbing numbers that I lay awake trying to make real … If Africa had lost twenty million people to slavery — that’s twenty thousand thousand people … My father’s father swam out of the darkness, and an endless shimmering continent, and above it beeswarms of unknown people, my own people, being blown away. I scrolled on hungrily, trying to find them. I woke at nine to find the light still on, and the screen glared blankly from the wall, but I made myself get up and get cracking. My days were needed for practical plans.

Luke, my son. We would travel together. Ask the ancestors to take us in.

There was a kind of moral dilemma, which it took me two minutes to dismiss. Should I ask Sarah if she’d let Luke go? Should I give her a chance to be reasonable?

No. She had never been reasonable.

Besides, Wicca World were under huge pressure, the elections were coming in the next few weeks and they were almost certainly going to lose to the Manguard coalition of male liberationists. Sarah had too much on her plate to listen.

Moreover, trouble was expected after the elections. Wicca World were coming under scrutiny for their use of the money they had collected, the fund they called ‘People Against the Ice’ — PAY, as the newstexts instantly renamed it — which had brought in billions, at least in the early days, before male critics began to suggest they were using the money to promote the party. It seemed likely things would get nasty. Even more reason to get Luke out.

My reasons were good, my logic impeccable. And yet, I took a son from his mother, without any warning. I can’t deny that.

Who could I trust? I’d stayed away from the club since the incident when I knocked Richard’s tooth out. Paul had rung a few times to see how I was, but I sat alone with the answerphone on.

Now I needed friends. Paul was a friend, and more important, he had hundreds of friends, he was very well liked — well loved, I should say, by most of the regulars at the club. I don’t think they had much feeling for me. I was always a bit of an outsider. But on the other hand, I was a man, and a man mistreated by women, at that, and nearly all of them detested women, and especially Wicca World, the archenemy, the witches’ coven, the ‘Cunts’ Coven’ as the lads called it, snickering with hatred, spitting at the screen … It wasn’t my scene, but I needed them.

Paul was happy — too happy — to get my call and be asked to the house, after all this time. He came that same evening, smelling of Le Musc. (I know because I asked him; it was overwhelming.) He was rather shy with me at first, but after some weed he began to relax. He told me they missed me at the Scientists. ‘No one much liked Richard, anyway, she was always being bitchy about people’ I had never got used to that knowing way gays had of referring to each other as ‘she’. ‘You were like a man possessed, you know, it took a dozen men to pull you off him … Where did you get so strong? I’d never have guessed, you seem so gentle.’

I suppose I realised he wanted me, I suppose I took advantage of him — But I didn’t know what was going to happen. How could anyone have foreseen what happened?

I outlined the situation to Paul. I showed him my favourite pictures of Luke. When I talked about Sarah, a frisson of distaste curdled Paul’s sensitive, handsome mouth. He said he thought Luke was ‘beautiful’. Then I played him one of the two recordings of Luke’s voice which had escaped Sarah’s furious search. He was singing Mendelssohn, by an irony. We sat and listened to it in silence, that slender thread of filigree wire, singing, it seemed, of some other world where no one would be unhappy or lonely: Oh, for the wings, for the wings, of a dove … Far away would I roam, far away, far away … In the wilderness build me a nest, and remain there for ever at rest … His eyes filled with tears. I knew Paul was with me.

The beginning of the plan seemed lighthearted, exciting. Paul had recruited Riswan and Ian and another man, Timmy, whom I hardly knew but am sure must have been a lover of his. Timmy was a specialist in unarmed combat, tall and lean with narrow, sculpted muscles and a wellshaped, blueshadowed naked head which he displayed even when out of doors, unlike most of the boys who by now were adopting little nuskin caps in the face of the cold. Timmy had mixed feelings about me, I think, but his desire to impress Paul must have prevailed over his jealousy. Riswan had known me for over a decade, and understood the situation with Sarah. Ian was friends with all of us.

There wasn’t going to be any violence. I was meant to come up with an immensely cunning scheme, though as yet the details weren’t quite clear. The guns in my mind were just a kind of backup, in case the women tried anything silly. I knew they would be needed later, when Wicca might come after us, and then as protection for Luke and me on the long drive across Euro. You couldn’t fly to Africa without a visa, so my plan was to drive down through France and Spain and make a seacrossing to Africa …

I meant the guns to come in much later, so why did I show them to the guys, the very first time that we all got together?

Some devil made me go to the cupboard, unlock the door and drag out the bag, heavy and cold, smelling of oil and sour metal. I wanted to impress them, show them I was serious, not just a wild man with a crackbrained plan. Not just another crazy lonely man.

They were sitting round the table in the dining-room, smoking green and drinking beer, a little subdued by the new surroundings. It took all my strength to get the bag on to the table. It landed with a thud, and I didn’t say a word. They stared as I unzipped it. We peered inside. They saw the pistols first. There were whistles, and gasps, and a lot of swearing.

I didn’t understand it until that day, but guns were made for men to play with. They’re the ultimate machine, the perfect toy, and all the guys wanted to handle them. I was first, picking up the.357 Magnum. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as my hands closed around the wooden grips of the handle. We were all crowding round and reading out Samuel’s labels, the ink slightly faded, sellotaped on. I bet he loved the words as well as the guns — ‘Heckler and Koch’, ‘Browning’, ‘Beretta’ … I got my own love of words from both parents. Dad used to read the Bible to me. Thou shalt not kill, pausing between phrases, his dark eyes looking up at me.

The big guns in their pillowcases came out last. There was a ‘Chinese Kalashnikov AKM’ (I’d thought Kalashnikovs were Russian), which had an ammunition clip that curved like a banana. There was a sawnoff doublebarrelled shotgun, ‘Made in Spain’, and an antique ‘US M1 Carbine 3006’, whatever that was, ancient, its wood deeply pitted and scored. (It looked used. How many people had it killed?) There was a ‘Tikka Finnish Hunting Rifle’, and one or two others I don’t remember. At the very bottom was the pièce de résistance, a brutal great matt black ‘Special Purpose Automatic Shotgun: 15 Shot: Pump Action: Made in Italy’. We looked at that shocked. It was such a bloody monster. It was a few seconds before Timmy hauled it out. Then I took it from him. It was mine; mine. It had a hefty pistol grip, and a chunky foldedover swag of grey metal that I worked out must be a shoulder stock. I hefted and swung it; this was the business. I was utterly absorbed. I forgot the others.

Then Riswan brought me back to earth by asking if we were going to take them with us. ‘Well, maybe just for backup,’ I said, unsure.

‘You mean, carry them,’ he said.

‘Well … I suppose so.’

There was a silence, while we imagined ourselves, five big men carrying loaded guns. It was thrilling. We had seen it in so many old films. It was what men did, in the age of heroes.