Rob Ewing - The Last of Us

‘I’m going to do it,’ he says.

He pushes the boat off; I help. The boat wobbles, he cries out, then uses the paddle for steadying. In a minute the net snags on a rock – it comes undone, and the buoys and armbands float free. Calum Ian tries to tie them back on, but it’s too hard to paddle with lots of extra junk, so in the end he just throws them away.

In the small shelter beside the slipway he practises: going forwards, back, forwards. If he paddles on one side he turns that way; the other, it’s the opposite.

‘Watch if I need help, all right?’ he says.

I sit beside Alex and wrap a sleeping bag around his legs, then Mairi’s. All the islands have white beaches, green hills. They look too far across the water.

Calum Ian goes way out, then turns again. It takes him longer to pull himself around on the way back, which I think must be due to having tired arms.

I help him drag the boat onto the slipway.

‘It’s bloody tough,’ he says, getting out. ‘You couldn’t do it. The waves are bumpy coming back. We won’t be coming that direction, maybe that’s all right, then? Help me out. Get me the map. How long to the next island?’

We put out our map with the orange cover on the ground. Calum Ian measures with his finger, following the wavy line the ferry takes. Two-and-a-half fingers.

‘How far d’you go just now?’

He looks at the map: then points to the end of his finger. Then I see that it’s not even his finger he’s pointing at, but his finger nail .

‘More practice,’ he says. But he looks at Alex: who’s lying down, sleeping again. We can see his breathing, the blanket going up and down.

‘Help me load the boat,’ Calum Ian says.

In the front store of the kayak we put my things, plus Mairi’s things. In the back, Alex’s and Calum Ian’s.

Then it’s time. Calum Ian goes in first, then Mairi, crouched between his legs.

But then there isn’t room for me and Alex: not even if we go deep within, down past Calum Ian’s feet, which is anyway too scary.

Calum Ian gets out, sits in a crumple. His hands are shaking – so I get out and look in our rations, find a sweet. He eats it, looking up at me, slowly chewing.

‘Thanks,’ he says.

He orders us out of the kayak. Then he unpacks the front store, leaving the store’s rubber hat off. He puts a lifejacket on Mairi – and asks her to sit inside.

Mairi does it, but only very slowly. I have to sit in the back one. It’s a squash, but we manage.

Finally Calum Ian helps Alex to fit inside the main hole, just in front of his own seat.

We push off – but nearly straight away the boat sinks low. Calum Ian can’t steer it – it turns in a circle then tips, too far – then we’re in the water.

I’m stuck – the water pushes around my middle – but then I come back up. Mairi has already come out: I drag her back onto the stone slip, she’s crying, choking.

Calum Ian is shouting desperately: he’s trying to find Alex, who’s still underneath.

We pull the boat all the way onto the stone. It seems to take too long – then Calum Ian’s got Alex, he’s out, coughing, dark with being wet.

Calum Ian just sits. He stares at the faraway islands. Stares like they’re the very end of the world.

We unzip the sleeping bag. Calum Ian wraps it across all of our shoulders.

‘Dad used to say – if a thing wasn’t difficult, then it wasn’t worth doing,’ he tells us.

Everyone thinks about this. Then Alex answers, ‘Difficult things are not much fun.’

‘No.’ Calum Ian hands around his packet of sweets. ‘You’ll get your fun again soon, Bonus Boy.’

He stares at the sea. I want to tell him I realised the sea is like fire: if you stare at it too long it stops making sense. But I think he already knows it doesn’t make sense.

‘Never saw Elizabeth’s house,’ I say. ‘We went to everyone else’s, but never hers.’

Calum Ian squeezes water from his trouser leg. Then he takes off his shoes, squeezes water from his socks. He looks at me for once without being angry, or annoyed.

‘We walked past her house,’ he says.

‘Why didn’t she say? We could’ve gone in.’

He looks at my neck. I see him make a sad face at the bruises he left there.

‘First time, she was worried about you. You’d gone off alone. Remember? Then the second time – that was just yesterday. When we were pushing the prams. We didn’t stop because she told me not to.’

‘She didn’t want to stop?’

‘Alex is more important, she said.’

It’s a lot to understand. No human being could resist going to their own home – no kid, especially. I ask where, and Calum Ian says that her house is beside the big hill, Cuialachmore, after the first village with a forest.

When I get my courage I ask him, ‘Did you like Elizabeth?’

He takes off Alex’s shoes, wrings his socks out. Then he does the same with mine, then Mairi’s.

‘More than I wanted to tell her.’ He goes back to the rucksack: says, ‘If I see her again – I’ll tell her.’

I am given a pair of Duncan’s old trousers to wear. Alex and Mairi are given dry T-shirts.

I start to feel warmer again. Calum Ian dries off his own T-shirt by laying it on a rock.

‘I used to think all the grown-ups had died,’ I say. ‘But maybe you’re the very last.’

He looks pleased that I’ve said this, but then not much. It’s like when the sun goes behind a cloud.

I look at the clouds, out over the sea. They go blue as it gets further. I train my eyes for an orange boat, but I know that it’s impossible. They’re dead.

Calum Ian scratches a stone on the ground, throws it away. ‘Now I don’t know what to do.’

I press his shoulder in a friendly way.

‘You’ll figure it out.’

This doesn’t make him look happy.

‘This time,’ he says, ‘this time I don’t want to make the decision. I’d rather there was a bigger person. Then it won’t be me to blame if it all goes wrong. I’m sick of being in charge.’

We all go quiet, then I say: ‘So I’ll be in charge. Tell me what needs deciding.’

It’s a very long time before he answers: ‘We can’t all go in the boat.’

His voice sounds flat, small-kid to me. That’s what happens when you say you’ll go in charge: everybody else sounds smaller compared to you.

I think about it carefully.

‘Firstly.’ I click my fingers for an idea. ‘If we can’t all go in, maybe some of us should go outside. ’

Answers sound smart when you say them. But Calum Ian doesn’t answer. It takes me a while to realise that by not answering he’s not deciding.

‘Right – OK, not safe,’ I say. ‘Maybe someone has to swim. With armbands, we could tie a rope, drag them behind?’

Nothing.

‘OK. The water’s too dark, plus too cold. Bad idea.’

We all look at the islands. I try to bring them closer with my eyes – it’s called reeling in. Then I close my eyes to bring them closer by concentration. It doesn’t work.

‘You think Elizabeth and Duncan are watching?’

Calum Ian doesn’t answer. He jangles a hollow cowrie shell in his hand like it’s a dice.

‘I can paddle the boat,’ he says. ‘I think I can do that. But it looks too dangerous to put anyone in the hatches.’

‘But we can’t all fit in the middle big hole.’

‘Correct.’

Calum Ian stands and faces us. He clears his throat. He maybe wants to appear adult, but with his too-big wetsuit and dirty face, he doesn’t much.

‘Two of us need to stay,’ he says.

We all listen. Alex’s breathing is mixed with the sound of the waves.

‘Maybe Alex is too sick to go?’