Joe Treasure - The Book of Air

Abigail asks her who she means, who we might have seen.

‘Looters, scroungers. You didn’t see them?’

‘No,’ I tell her, ‘we’ve seen no one.’ Abigail looks at me, surprised at the lie, but I’m not inclined to feed Deirdre’s fears. ‘It wasn’t us rang the bell. It was Simon.’

‘Well I hope you’re going to smack his bottom,’ Deirdre says, ‘teach him a lesson he won’t forget in a hurry.’

Abigail takes her hand and she stops moving about. ‘There’s no harm done, Deirdre.’

‘Maybe not, but you shouldn’t ring the bell, do you hear, Simon? Not unless there’s danger. Tell him, Jason.’

‘Hear that, Si?’ I said to him. ‘You shouldn’t ring the bell.’

Simon’s fighting to say something. His lips are open and I can see his teeth. He feels the injustice but can’t defend himself. He’s glaring at me, trying to say my name.

‘And there is harm done, actually, Abigail,’ Deirdre says. ‘My journal’s gone missing.’

‘It’ll turn up,’ I tell her.

‘How do you know?’

‘Either it will or it won’t, but there’s not much we can do about it.’

‘But someone’s been in my room, going through my things. It gives me the creeps.’

‘Who – who’s been in your room?’

She gives me a withering look. ‘Well obviously I don’t know who.’

Simon hasn’t given up yet. He’s shaking with fury. He points through the curtain, and I see it’s not Jason he’s trying for, but the other J .

‘Was it Django?’ I ask him. ‘Did Django tell you to do it?’

He nods emphatically.

Deirdre snorts with annoyance. ‘Oh for God’s sake, Jason, if you’ve got nothing useful to contribute…’

‘Look, everybody,’ Aleksy says, ‘I understand this. Deedee’s journal. It’s personal. We can respect that, Jason, yes? We can promise, each one of us, if it comes into our hands, not to look, not to read. OK?’

He’s looking at me, so I make a submissive gesture and say, ‘Yes, obviously.’

He turns to make eye contact with Abigail.

She says, ‘Of course. We’re not to read it. What is it, a newspaper?’

There’s a pause while this sinks in, that Abigail doesn’t know what a journal is. I hear the monkey clambering on the roof. Beyond the curtain the clarinet is still bleating and bubbling.

Abigail looks self-conscious. ‘An old one, I thought, maybe, that Deirdre likes. Is it something else?’

‘It’s just a kind of notebook,’ I tell her. Then I ask Aleksy, ‘What about Django?’

‘Here we go,’ Deirdre says. ‘It’s always the same with you.’

‘I only said…’

‘You just can’t stand that Django’s happy and you’re not. That he’s full of life and you’re… the opposite.’

‘I only meant…’

‘ What about Django? Like a child who thinks he got the smaller piece of cake.’

‘I meant, what about asking him…’

‘Django would never take something of mine without permission. He’d never take anything. I’ve never met anyone less interested in things.’

‘What about asking him not to read it if it turns up, like Aleksy said – that’s all I meant – the same as he asked all of us. Jesus Christ.’

There’s more I want to tell her, if I can get my thoughts in order, but suddenly she’s crying. Abigail gathers her up, one hand around her shoulder, the other smoothing her hair. She catches my eye and I decide to say nothing.

Between sobs, Deirdre says, ‘It’s not about that. There’s nothing for anyone to read. I haven’t written anything yet. Not anything . That’s what I can’t bear – that my whole life is just a blank.’ For a while she weeps against Abigail’s bosom. Then she pulls away and starts talking more clearly. ‘It was a present to myself for my birthday. I went on a course called Writing the Spirit, and the teacher said write every day, keep a journal. So I bought it and it was so beautiful and I wanted something really significant to happen – not just, you know, went for a lovely ride, Pedro lost a shoe, blah, blah. I wanted to have a significant thought. Then people started getting sick and I didn’t want to write someone died in our village today – not on the first page, like the first ever thing I wrote. And we were all scared. I was so scared it made me sick. People said you have to eat. They said eat fresh fruit. My mother phoned to tell me they were saying on Facebook to eat ginger. And I didn’t want to just write that, about eating ginger. It was meant to be about my life, and my life had been suspended while these horrible things happened. Then my mother died, and that evening I opened the book and was about to write, my mother’s dead, but I stopped and wondered who am I writing this for? Because suddenly everyone was dying, and I didn’t know who’d be left to read it, who’d be left who knew or cared anything about me.’

It’s quiet for a while. The clarinet’s stopped. The light is going. If there’s birdsong still it doesn’t reach us through the walls. We stand in the heavy indoor silence thinking or not thinking. And it’s not like silence used to be. It has no meaning. It’s like the silence of cattle. We’re just waiting for the next thing, whatever the next thing might be. And I’m back at Abbeymill Farm, the dead with their sunken faces and the flies drunk and reeling. I’ve no patience with Deirdre and her journal. The smallest loss is a window on catastrophe – by now we all know this – it’s everybody’s story but she claims it as her own.

Abigail touches Deirdre’s face. ‘I know, love,’ she says, ‘I know. There’s nothing left but work. At least we still have that. Animals to feed, water to carry. That’s all there is. It’s what will save us – doing it, and having it to do.’

Deirdre hugs Abigail and kisses her and rests against her for a minute. She makes to leave through the curtains into the body of the church, then turns and puts her finger to her lips. Django is lying on his back on the altar, apparently asleep. Abigail smiles and I see that Django is to be endlessly indulged and I am forever to be thought mean-spirited and envious for not falling in love with him. Even Abigail, in the end, will take his side, and my anger will turn inward until there’s nothing in my head but the stink of death and flies swarming because there’ll be no one else who sees what I see.

The horse has pulled the cart a few steps and is munching the grass on the roadside. The monkey is jumping on the roof of the goose house, setting the geese scratching and hissing.

‘You found geese,’ Aleksy says. ‘I’ll ride with Jason. We’ll set them down in the top field. Come, Rasputin, leave the birds alone.’

I lift Simon on to the cart and we move off. The women cross the lawn towards the house – no longer a lawn, with no reason to keep the grass down. The shadows of the orchard trees reach out towards them. Maud, crossing with buckets from the spring, waits for them by the front door. As we turn in through the gate, I hear the reassuring murmur of Abigail’s voice and I see the gentle way she and Maud touch each other’s arms and hands. I want to be soothed by the sight of it but I’m too angry to be soothed.

I think I will become mad. I am already mad. They were right to put me here. I hear sounds. I am afraid to write what I hear. More than sounds – women whispering, breathing. I lie in bed and can’t tell if the voices are outside me. I touch my mouth to see if it’s me talking. I put the pillow over my head but the voices are louder. They are inside the walls or under the floor. What I took for a dream is no dream, or I’m asleep and can’t wake up, or I’m dead and this room is the Book of Death.