Joe Treasure - The Book of Air

I carry him into the kitchen, following the trail of Aleksy’s blood. Aleksy is sideways on a kitchen chair, his good arm clinging to the back. Deirdre has cut the shirt sleeve from the injured arm. For a moment the wound is bright and open like a mouth, blood pulsing out of it. She’s knotted a tea towel above and winds it tight with a spoon. Abigail has pushed aside jars of jam to make space on the table for her sewing box. She pulls out pin cushions and reels of thread. She has a sheet over her shoulder. Maud comes up from the cellar with a bottle of brandy. They’ve got stuff stored away I don’t even know about. The kettle’s already rattling on the stove.

I sit Simon on a chair and crouch to look at him. There’s no colour in his face. The external bleeding isn’t much but I’m worried about the knock to his skull. Behind him, Aleksy’s doing a lot of grunting. Maud and Abigail hold him still while Deirdre sews him up. Simon keeps twisting round to look, so I give up and turn his chair the other way.

When I start cleaning the wound Simon says ‘ow’ and puts his hand up but he doesn’t take his eyes off the main attraction. ‘I said ow.’

‘I heard you, but I’ve got to make sure it’s clean before I put a bandage on.’

Aleksy asks Deirdre if she’s done this before.

‘With a horse, once, I did,’ she says.

‘Well remember, please, that I am not a horse.’

I explode at them. ‘Christ, you two, what were you thinking, taking Simon?’

‘He was on the cart,’ Deirdre says. ‘He was playing in the boxes. We were a mile away before we knew.’

Aleksy grunts. ‘Stop talking and sew, you psycho bitch horse doctor.’

Simon giggles.

I ask him what’s funny and he shrugs. ‘He called her a cycle horse witch doctor.’

‘Tell me what happened today. Who attacked you?’

‘Yellow people,’ he says.

Yellow people? And they threw stones at you?’

‘Sticks and stones will break your bones.’

‘And fired a gun?’

‘It was loud.’

‘Were you scared?’

‘I hid in my house.’

‘You would have been safer back here, you know, in a real house with stone walls. You can build your house in the dining room if you like. Do you want to do that?’

‘OK.’

‘Did the stones hit your house and knock it down?’

‘I looked out the door.’

‘Why did you do that?’

‘When Aleksy…’

‘When Aleksy was shot?’

He nods. ‘And…’

‘He started making all that noise.’

‘Yes.’

Abigail comes with the brandy and a strip torn from her sheet for a bandage and leaves them beside me on the table.

‘I’m going to put some alcohol on this, Simon,’ I tell him. ‘It might sting.’

He pulls away, shaking his head.

‘I’ve got to. It’s so it won’t get infected.’

He looks at me now. ‘But Jangle says…’

‘What? What does he say?’

‘Jangle says I’m inf… inf…’

‘You’re not infected, Simon. I got sick and now I’m better. But you’re fine.’

‘Not that.’ He’s annoyed with me for getting it wrong. ‘Jangle says I’m inf…isible.’

‘Invisible? How does he make that out?’ I’m laughing and I can see he doesn’t like it. I reach for the brandy bottle. ‘Is it a game,’ I ask him, ‘some game you and Django play?’

This doesn’t help. He’s struggling to say no, or not a game, or to call me naughty for laughing.

‘Just hold still,’ I tell him. I put a corner of the bandage to the mouth of the brandy bottle, up-end it, stand it back on the table and dab the wound.

‘Ow ow, I said ow.’

‘Are you invisible all the time, or only some of the time?’

‘All the time, Jangle says.’

‘And are you invisible to everyone? Can I see you? Can Django see you? What about Abigail?’

I can tell these are annoyingly stupid questions.

‘You can’t mmm….’

There’s a b word buzzing in his throat. His eyes bulge and he does his vomit face. I take Abigail’s bandage and begin winding it about his head.

‘…mmmbeat me.’

I stop what I’m doing, hold his head and look into his face. ‘No one’s going to beat you, Simon. Did someone say they would? Did Django?’

‘No. You…’

‘I can’t, I get it. And I won’t beat you. Whatever you do. No one will. I promise.’

‘No one. Ever. Jangle says.’

I split the end of the bandage to tie it round his head. It bothers me that he’s talking like this. No one’s ever hit him, as far as I know.

Deirdre has finished with Aleksy, so I take Simon by the hand to join them. Aleksy’s still clinging to his chair. He’s pale and sweaty and breathing hard. Maud comes from the stove with a warm flannel and wipes his face.

‘You all right?’ I ask him.

‘Better than ever.’

‘Simon says you were attacked by yellow people.’

Aleksy nods. ‘Fluorescent jackets.’

‘Like a uniform,’ Deirdre says. ‘An army.’

‘What if they’re just people,’ Abigail says, ‘like us, and these jackets are just what they had?’

‘That’s what I tell her. Listen to Abigail, Deedee. These people find a warehouse somewhere. Nice waterproof jackets hanging on hooks. Who cares what they look like?’

‘Dozens of them? All the same?’

‘Dozens! Who says dozens?’

‘I saw at least a dozen.’

‘Not so many. I saw maybe five.’

‘They were among the trees.’

‘Exactly. Trees, shadows, patches of sunlight enough to blind you. You see someone here and then here. Same few people, scurrying about.’

‘Scurrying! These men had guns, Aleksy.’

‘Maybe men. Maybe women and children. Maybe just children.’

‘An army of men. I’m telling you, Abigail. Jason, listen. Armed with guns. They nearly killed you, Aleksy. You’re not thinking straight. He isn’t thinking. They’re organised. They were waiting for us.’

‘Kill me? With this scratch?’

‘It was a warning shot.’

‘It was a pop gun. A small handgun maybe in the hands of a child. Bang, bang, bang. Couldn’t hit me once. Just this graze. Couldn’t hit any of us. Some soldier wanted to kill us, Deedee, we’d be dead.’

‘And we will be. They’ll come for us, now they know where we are.’

‘And how they know this?’

‘If they followed us.’

‘If. If.’

‘It’s not the same for you, Aleksy. Listen to me, Abigail. Aleksy thinks this is the worst that can happen – a bullet in the arm. Even a bullet in the head isn’t the worst. Getting shot isn’t the worst, Jason.’ She turns back to Abigail. ‘They’re men. They don’t know what we know.’

‘Forget men and women, Deedee. It’s land, OK? Our land. Their land. We don’t go past the woods no more, then they don’t come for us. Live, let live.’

Abigail puts her arms round Deirdre. ‘We’re safe here, love. They won’t hurt us here. You did a good job. See how we take care of each other.’ She stoops to gather up the bloody scraps of sheeting. She gives the floor around Aleksy’s chair a rough wipe and stands up with her bundle. ‘Maud, make a pot of tea. Real tea. Use three bags and let it sit. We all need tea. And then we’ll clean this place up.’ She goes out the back door into the yard.

Aleksy and Simon are comparing bandages and I’m asking Deirdre about the time she sewed up a horse and Maud’s warming the teapot, when Django comes in from the yard with Abigail behind him. ‘Where is he?’ He drops his shoulder bag on the floor and hazelnuts spill out. ‘Is he OK?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ Aleksy says. ‘Strong as an ox.’

Django doesn’t respond. He crosses to where Simon is standing and drops to his knees. ‘Who did this to you?’