Geoff Ryman - The Child Garden

There was no archness about her, no mischievousness. She’s lost the old London, thought Milena. She’s shed it, like a skin.

‘And,’ said Lucy. ‘I’m pregnant.’

She continued chewing the lamb that shouldn’t have been there.

‘Metastasis. A little bit broke free and started growing in my womb. One chance in ten million, but how many million chances have I got?’ She coughed and laughed at me same time. ‘As many as I need. She’ll be a cancer, too, my daughter. I have very definite ideas about how to bring her up. I’d like her to be a child for forty or fifty years. I’ll build a raft and we’ll live on it in the middle of the ocean, just catching the fish that leap up when you’re quiet and part of the scenery. I’ll just let her laze. We’ll turn somersaults on tiny islands. We won’t do nothing at all. There won’t be any need. And when she’s fed up being a child — well men. She’ll become something new. We’ll keep on changing, getting thicker and healthier.’

She looked at Milena in silence, cheeks bulging, in motion. Kerswallow gulp. It wasn’t the time to ask, but it was Milena’s job to know. ‘Lucy,’ she said, pronouncing very slowly and clearly, as if perhaps Lucy had forgotten some of her English. ‘Remember you said you would be in an opera? The Divine Comedy? Remember, you said you would play Beatrice? Will you be able to record your part in the opera?’

‘Ohhhhhh,’ growled Lucy in pity and fierceness. She reached out and rubbed Milena’s hair rather hard. ‘Oh, you poor little creature.’ Lucy looked at her smiling, as if at a fool. ‘I already have recorded it, can’t you see? In another time.’

Her mind has gone, thought Milena. We’ve recorded nothing with her. We haven’t been able to find her. She and Lucy looked at each other, each pitying the other.

And the Milena who was remembering thought: pity her if you like, Milena, but you will go home and find that all her part has been recorded. You’ll see her, singing with Dante, leading him to heaven. And you’ll try to tell yourself that she must have slipped in and done it when you weren’t there. But the rest of the cast won’t remember singing with her. Except in their dreams. The world isn’t what we thought it was. That plate of lamb shouldn’t be there, and her performance shouldn’t be there, and perhaps the world shouldn’t be here either.

‘You’re all the same,’ said Lucy, shaking her head. ‘Always worried. I think of you all,’ she said, looking into Milena’s eyes again with a newly unnerving stare, ‘like you was flowers in my garden. Beautiful flowers in a garden. When you’re young, your bodies are so beautiful, all firm and fresh and full of heft. I want to press you in my book, just to keep you. But I open the book, and you’ve all gone grey and brown.’

Lucy took Milena’s hand. Lucy’s skin was thick, springy, as if upholstered with foam rubber. ‘There’s been some mistake,’ she whispered. ‘I should look into it, if I were you. You weren’t meant to the, you know. Ever.’

And Milena remembered being young and well, running up the steps of the Shell. There was no Terminal ache along the crown of her head. There was lightness and fire in her feet. She turned a corner, and remembered finding Jacob on the fine spring morning of his death.

He was lying slightly on one side, his eyes half-open, dry.

Just for a moment there was the faint hope that he was blanked out again. Postpeople did when their memories were full. ‘Jacob?’ Milena whispered, as if he could awake. Then there was the immediate certainty. ‘Oh. Jacob,’ she said in pity.

She looked at his shoes. He had put them on that morning, his old worn shoes, quickly ruined in climbing stairs, the sole loose and in peeling layers, a hole with borders of many different shades of grey.

I am the one who finds you when you die.

Not this time, Jacob.

Milena sat down next to him on the staircase, and took his hand. It was still limp and warm, and there was an exhalation. It was not exactly unpleasant, but it made one wary, like the smell of a foreign fruit from a strange land that one is going to have to taste.

A small gold crucifix fell out of Jacob’s hand into hers, on a broken gold chain. The action seemed so natural it was as if he had passed it to her. Milena looked at the broken chain. He must have grabbed the cross, she thought, as if it could hold him up. He must have felt it coming, like a descending weight. He grabbed the cross and held it and the chain broke and he fell.

It was not exactly shameful to be a Christian. It meant you were a simple soul. Jacob did not come by a crucifix of gold by himself. It would have been passed from one dying hand to another, through generations. Who did Jacob have to pass it on to? He had his tiny room on the first floor, with his tiny stove and his tiny bed. He was not married. His life had been burnt through in service. The conviction came to Milena, irrational and immovable: the crucifix has been passed to me.

She stroked Jacob’s head, as if to touch all the memories and all the good faith that had been there. She did not want to leave him, though there were all the usual things to be done: the quiet summoning of the What Does, the speedy gathering up of the dead. Well, someone else could go and get the What Does. Milena would stay there. Milena would stay there and take account of what had happened, pay attention to the death of Jacob the Postperson.

She took his ankles and pulled him out of the corner of the landing, away from the wall, into what seemed a more comfortable position. She arranged his hands.

We never had our talk, Jacob, the one in which I asked you what it was like to know so many people so well, to have so much information in your head. But I think it must have been like being smothered, smothered in other people, making demands.

I made more demands than anyone, Jacob. I cannot remember you making any demands on me. So I’m just going to sit here Jacob, and give you the time you deserve, a bit of time to understand the pattern you made, weaving through space and time, up and down the Shell, over and over, room to room, reminding people about debts and rehearsals, appointments and times to take medicines. Did you pray at night alone? Did you go to a Church, a boisterous singing church that made you happy? Is there a church for Postpeople? And what about the seizures, the way you would blank out?

People said you were used to blanking out, Jacob. Postpeople do blank out if they don’t take care of themselves. Three times, you blanked out, Jake, three times you let yourself get too full. You told me that it was like dying. Each time it happens, you said, you could feel your mind going cold in sections, like a city turning out its lights. Then they would give you a virus that taught you who you were and who your clients were, and back you went again. Three times you started anew, but it didn’t make you look any fresher. You always looked dead around the eyes.

What can I make of that, Jacob? That you should have taken better care? They had viruses that could devour memory, leave you clean and open. But you were too busy with us, too busy taking care of us. Why did we deserve such care Jacob? We did nothing for you, except exchange the hellos and the goodbyes that are everyone’s due.

I’m glad I never saw it. They say you crawled, Jacob. When the seizures came, you would crawl, and foam at the mouth. You would tear your hair. You fought, they told me, fought against it. You howled, No! No! and tore your shirt, gentle Jacob who was the soul of circumspection and dignity.

This last one killed you, didn’t it? You died in another blank out, Jacob. So what does that mean?

I think it means you were abused. Your mind was stirred about like a casserole, you were taken over for the purposes of others. But you adjusted, each time. You found the joys that this life had to offer, limited as they were. The joy of knowing so many people well, the joy of being needed, of having a regular and recognised place, the joy of knowing so much about them, these many people.