Rob Ewing - The Last of Us

‘He’s having second thoughts.’ Then: ‘We should have a minute’s silence.’ Then: ‘Teamwork will work.’

Alex nods, like I got it realistic.

I notice he’s breathing fast, so I count his breaths like I saw Elizabeth doing once.

My count gets up to twenty – but then I don’t know how fast twenty is, so have to stop.

Looking out of the window, we see plastic bags on the slipway outside. I only realise they’re the bags containing Elizabeth and Duncan’s clothes when I see Duncan’s fiddle set alongside.

Alex drinks more of my water, then after this I help him to the toilet because his legs got wobbly. I get him to change the clothes he wet in the night. He does it in private behind the toilet door, even though he wants to keep holding my hand on the other side.

‘A picture of God’s house,’ he says. ‘Only there’s a cracked bit. On the cloud, at the front.’

Back on the bench I tuck him in, with a fresh blanket. Mairi comes closer to both of us. She pushes something across the wooden seats towards me.

It’s one of the drawings she did yesterday. The one she scrumpled. Now it’s flattened out proper, like she had second thoughts about destroying it.

Her eyes are keen. I think she wants praise for it, so I give her encouragement, but she keeps pointing.

She points at the drawing – then at Alex. I look at the picture, trying to understand.

Her finger is keeping close to the wrong yellow sun: the one she drew in her picture-garden.

‘Alex? What?’

Now she points closer, at Alex’s mouth. But there isn’t a good enough clue for me to understand.

In the end she takes her drawing back. She finds a blue pen and begins to add to it: first a flag, then a stick under the flag. Then a box underneath. Then some other flags.

‘It’s a boat.’

She nods strongly – then points back at the yellow shape she drew in her garden.

‘You’ve got a boat in your garden.’

When I say this she gets up and draws a tick in the air.

It’s an effort to get the courage to tell Calum Ian.

We find him outside, sitting on the stone pier, eyes red-circled from staring too long with the binoculars.

‘Show me,’ he says.

Mairi is first to get to the garden of her old home. She goes and stands beside the rubbish we saw two days before: the hump of tarpaulin twisted with fishing rope.

This time Calum Ian unties and untangles the rope, and pulls off the tarpaulin.

Underneath is a long, thin red boat. Calum Ian, with a flat voice, calls it a kayak.

I remember now that we always saw people going around our island in these. One of the teachers at the school had one, too. There was even a kayak-hire.

The boat has the white-foam stuff from fish crates tied around its edges, plus two orange buoys, wrapped in green nets at both sides of the back of it. There’s bubblewrap in spirals along the sides, stuck down with tape, and tinsel in wavy lines along the front.

‘Your brother had an escape plan,’ Calum Ian says.

Mairi nods.

He feels along the boat. Then he looks inside the seat part in the middle. Then he tries to tip the kayak over, to check the underneath of it.

Finally, he taps on the edge of it to listen to the hollow plastic noise it makes.

‘My class went out on these, at the school,’ he says. ‘Last year. But it was only the once. And I didn’t go. Dad wouldn’t let me. Because I couldn’t—’ He screws up his eyes, maybe for concentration.

I think he’s going to cover the boat back up again, but then he says determined: ‘I need to practise.’

Our first problem is: how do we get from Mairi’s house to the sea? Because the nearest bay is over the hill.

First we think of shopping trolleys: there’s a garden across the street which has two. But it would be too hard to lift the boat up so high as that.

We search the other gardens. In one I find a doll’s pram; in another, a real pram. But they’re too weak. Then we decide that anything with wheels could be good, so I get a rusty bike, and Mairi gets a kid’s walking trolley for bricks from her own home.

But it’s the same problem as before: the bike is too high up, the boat too heavy for us to lift. And the walking trolley: too little to fit.

Alex sits on the grass, watching. His face is sweaty. Even though he’s not helping he’s breathing like it’s hard work. I think he’s joking, but when I complain Calum Ian tells me to stop, to shut up about it.

We get fed up, so we lie down. Alex drinks all of the pink water. Then Calum Ian clicks his fingers at me and Mairi and says, ‘We’re all going to drag it.’

He orders both of us – not Alex – to the garden. Then he starts to pull. The boat has a handle on its very point, so Calum Ian pulls that. Then he ties three bits of washing line to the sides, so we can all pull together.

The boat scrapes, turns, scrapes.

It begins to slide. We pull it ten, twenty feet.

I want to cheer, but then I remember about Elizabeth and Duncan – my heart goes cold.

We pull it into the street. Calum Ian keeps wanting to check we haven’t scraped a hole in the bottom. Then he goes and gets the tarpaulin and we pull the boat across that, and it’s faster, but only until we get to the edge of it, then we have to start again, and again.

We find a gap in the fence and pull it through. In the grassy field beyond the boat slithers rather than scrapes. It’s hard work. We do it by tarpaulin, grass, counting each new turn. We get bored, stop and start again.

At the top of the hill we wait. We can see the shore, the sea, some islands. Calum Ian shields his eyes from the sun and looks and looks. I know who he’s looking for.

In the end, on the downhill, we go fast. The boat runs ahead of us, scrapes on the last bit of rock.

Then it’s in. Then it goes too far – we almost lose hold so Calum Ian falls to grab the washing lines.

He orders us to pull the boat back to the edge – then towards the pier, and the ferry slip. It’s the worst hard work, but we manage. Then he shouts at me for dragging it too far and nearly losing everything.

‘Always you ! You’re the blame of everything! Why couldn’t you have been on the boat?’

I cover my ears, which has the best effect, because he stops. Then when I uncover them he’s forgotten – or is trying not to remember what he just said.

After this, we sit on the grass. Alex has come to join us from the house. He’s in the sun, just breathing, watching. The way he pants reminds me of a dog. But I’ve learnt from telling Duncan he looked like a pig that you don’t tell people when they remind you of animals.

‘Try to stay awake,’ Calum Ian says, rubbing Alex’s hair hard, punching him gentle on the shoulder.

Alex shivers. ‘I’m tired.’

‘Just – don’t shut your eyes, OK?’

We go back to Mairi’s house and find a box of kit that her brother put together: armbands, plastic bags, two lifejackets, a float, plus two smelly black spongy suits, which Calum Ian says are called wetsuits.

He tries one on. It’s way big. His arms and legs look fat, crinkled. Mairi tries on the boots and gloves.

‘OK – right. Don’t think too much,’ Calum Ian says, to himself, talking fast. ‘Use yer guts – not yer brain, Dad said. Also, remember he told you – don’t be stupid lad. Forget the fear. Quit being a scaredy-cat.’

Me and Mairi hold the boat so he can get in. It seems very wobbly – especially when his body begins to shake – then Mairi remembers.

She goes to her house and comes back with a brown plastic bag. In the bag are rubber rings.

She points to the sides of the boat; Calum Ian shrugs.

We spend a lot of time blowing up the rubber rings. I see stars from blowing too much. Calum Ian keeps checking his watch. Finally he tucks them in the sides, underneath the green net holding the buoys.