Joe Treasure - The Book of Air

‘But Abigail, you must know about the Elmbridge gang, surely. Everyone knows. It was all their fault. They released the virus.’

‘No, Deirdre,’ I say, ‘that was never proved.’

‘Only because all the people trying to prove it kept dying.’

‘And you never knew this?’ Aleksy is intrigued by this fresh evidence of Abigail’s isolation. ‘They kept this from you? You were in a Cistercian convent, or how?’

But Abigail is looking at me. ‘They’re saying Simon’s mother did this?’

‘No, not Simon’s mother. She was as much a victim…’

‘Oh come on, Jason,’ Deirdre says, ‘for God’s sake.’

‘As much a victim as anyone.’

‘And there I was, on the top deck of the number 68 with this discarded newspaper in my hand, and I started sweating. I’d been given a glimpse of the light that would lead us out of this darkness even as the darkness fell.’

‘So this boy,’ Aleksy says, ‘this boy who walked away unharmed from Elmbridge Farm. This boy is Simon? Your nephew?’ He’s looking at me and he’s having difficulty focusing on my face, or I am on his. His eyes grow and shrink and are their own size again.

And Django is still talking. ‘It just felt like flu to start with, nothing out of the ordinary. But as soon as I got home I wheeled my bike out from under the stairs in my building and hung it from the light in the stairwell. I put a broom through the spokes and hung more things from it, so it was like a mobile – round things, saucepan lids, a clock. Wheels within wheels, see, like in Ezekiel. And the wheels were angels, and I heard their wings like the noise of great waters. Then I couldn’t stand up any more and Mrs Burgess from the ground floor flat put me to bed.’

‘You’ve had it.’ Deirdre stares at Django as if she’s just seen one of Ezekiel’s angels.

‘No one knew what it was. By the time I’d come through Mrs Burgess was past help and it was everywhere.’

‘You’ve had it, the blessing and everything, and you never said.’

‘You never asked.’

‘No one survived.’

Aleksy nods at me. ‘Jason survived.’

‘No one at the beginning, though.’

‘Not many perhaps,’ Django says. ‘But not many saw the sundial. Saw it for what it was, I mean.’

We’re looking at the newspaper cutting again, which shakes in Deirdre’s hands. I have to shut my eyes and take another look to be sure the shadow on the sundial isn’t moving.

‘Wait though, Django.’ Deirdre says. ‘This means you knew Simon before we got here? You knew him already?’

‘I’d never met him.’

‘But you had this picture of the Elmbridge boy in your pocket. And now here we are. And here’s the Elmbridge boy.’

‘We were guided.’

‘By you. You knew where to find him. You lied to us.’

‘I never lied. You assumed….’

‘I assumed you were telling the truth.’

‘I was led, Deirdre. We all were.’

‘You let me think you didn’t know where we were going. That this road, and then this road just felt right. And then this road. Until, hey look, a big house. Let’s see if anyone’s there.’

‘Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire.’

I ask him, ‘How did you know where to find us?’

‘It was all there for anyone who wanted to know – back then when the internet worked – where you lived, what properties you owned.’

For no reason I can see, Deirdre is weeping.

‘And the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers.’ Django rubs Deirdre’s back, kneads her shoulders, rocks in sympathy with her. His voice is low. ‘I never lied.’

‘Well what would you call it?’

‘Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar and he laid it upon my mouth.’

‘What does that mean ?’ She’s still arguing but the fight has gone out of her. ‘That’s just words. You don’t even make sense.’

‘It’s the only sense I can make. I saw Simon and I knew, and I was burned up with the knowledge. My mouth was on fire. I said to the angel, here am I, send me.’

‘Which means what, exactly?’

‘Which means we’re in the exact middle of a living miracle. I will give a child to be their prince, it says. And here he is, asleep upstairs in his bed. Which means this is written. Our lives are written. Doesn’t that make a difference?’ He laughs, and it’s an infectious shout of laughter.

There’s something wrong with Django’s reasoning that I can’t quite put my finger on, and I don’t much want to anyway, because I find it’s so much easier knowing it all has a purpose.

‘They shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. That… that is what’s written.’ Django is leaning out at the window, shouting up at the sky. ‘A new heaven,’ he says, ‘and a new earth.’

And it feels new. Everything lifts and pulses with a vividness I’ve never seen before. I find myself inclined to laugh. ‘Look at this place, though,’ I say, ‘this house, that lawn, those trees. You can see why I wanted it.’

Somebody must have moved first or we must all have felt drawn by the evening air because here we are on the steps by the front door. House martins wheel restlessly above us and the shadows on the grass are merging into one shadow. We cross the lawn to the orchard and wander among the trees, dividing and dispersing and regrouping according to some logic that I think would be apparent to me if I was sitting on a branch looking down. Then one after another we fall on our backs and watch the sky.

‘Let’s go for a spin.’ It’s Aleksy talking. I think he means this – what we’re already doing – spinning through space while we cling with our backs to the ground. But he says, ‘Let’s go for a spin in Jason’s beautiful car.’

It’s a preposterous idea. But the car’s still there, by the front door, where I abandoned it in my fever. And here we are, and none of us with a better idea. So we run from the orchard and across the gravel drive and through the grass. Abigail is ahead of me and I see how lovely she is, moving with a swaying ease that takes her no effort. So much of Deirdre’s elegance is stitched together and slipped on like her dress. It’s all coded messages, referring to something other than itself.

We reach the car and climb in, except Maud, who backs away shaking her head. Aleksy takes the driving seat with Deirdre beside him, her stockinged feet on the dashboard, Django and Abigail and me sprawled in the back, all of us laughing as the car jerks forward and we sink against the cushioned leather, breathing its luxurious smell. We curve round over the lawn and back to the drive, heading towards the house. The arch of the inner gateway passes over head and we’re in the stable yard, vibrated by cobbles. The horses whinny in their stalls, setting up a din in the hen house.

Aleksy pulls us into a tight circle and just before we hit the stable door he brakes, throws us into reverse and forward again, and here we are back on the drive. The moon has risen to greet us. I think we might lift our weight off the ground and spin through wisps of cloud to join it. But instead we drift on to the lawn and down towards the corner where the grass breaks up into wilder growth and the brook runs among weeds and rushes. We bounce over the rough ground, and it seems nothing for such a vehicle to hop the brook, squeeze between saplings and flatten itself under the lowest railing of the fence to reach the road which is its home. But Aleksy hits the brakes. We tilt into the brook and the car stalls.

Deirdre stops laughing and Abigail is clutching my arm. We stare through the windscreen at the church tower and the dark space where the road disappears among trees towards everything we’ve lost and everything that threatens our existence. Then we climb out of the Merc in silence and wander back the way we came, spreading out now the car isn’t here to hold us together, Deirdre with an arm round Aleksy’s neck, Django going his own way. Abigail gathers up Maud and leads her towards the house. After a moment I find myself alone on the lawn and no reason to be here or anywhere in particular.