Конрад Уильямс - One

Jane wondered if the man would not look at him because of how alien he must seem. His breath sucked and rattled behind the bicycle mask like in a child’s nightmare. The man still had the whistle in his mouth and it tooted pathetically as he exhaled. He let it fall from his lips. He said, ‘She’s dead.’

‘Who’s dead?’

‘Ella, my granddaughter.’

Jane didn’t know what to say. He was itching to get away, to retrieve his rucksack and get back on the roads and rails south. Every minute spent putting sticking plaster on wounds here meant another minute away from the needs of his boy. He sensed movement and turned to see an elderly woman making her uncertain way down the mounds of bare land abutting the castle ramparts. The oldman stood up and went to her. They bussed against each other, like clouds, yielding, finding each other’s shape with the surety that comes from years of companionship. Jane envied them that. He and Cherry had been together for seven years. Prior to that, his longest relationship had fizzled out at three. He had longed for the kind of security he could see being played out here in front of him, albeit born out of grief.

‘Where was your granddaughter?’ Jane asked.

The old man cast a glance up to the battlements, but either the light or the painfulness of glimpsing the place of her death caused him to avert his gaze. ‘She was playing. We said it was all right. You shouldn’t clip a kid’s wings, despite all the paedophiles and murderers. You can’t stop a life from being lived.’ He choked a little on the irony of his words. ‘It’s all right, Brendan,’ the old woman said.

‘Anyway. We were down in the castle keep. She said she wanted to go and have a look at the view. Angela here, she’s got emphysema. She’s not in great shape at the moment. I didn’t want to leave her on her own and she couldn’t climb to the top. So I told Ella she could go on her own as long as she was careful. She was a good girl and I knew she wouldn’t cause any bother.’

The old man didn’t go on. He kept opening his mouth to say something, and then there’d be a quiver in his face and he’d shut it again. His eyes were large and pale grey and very wet, like something from a fishmonger’s slab. His skin was blotchy and sagging; his hair blown by the wind into a shivering grey meringue. His wife was huddled into her coat. Her lips seemed too loose for her face. They gathered together, a smudged scarlet slick. She kept pursing them, as if she were sucking at a sweet, or keeping badly fitted dentures in position. Most likely, Jane thought, she was trying to keep the lid on her rage or her grief. There was an almighty storm piling up behind those defences. Jane closed his eyes. The more survivors he came across, the more stories like this he would have to listen to.

‘We felt the heat down in the keep,’ Brendan said. ‘I mean, the chappie, guide fella, had only just told us the walls were ten feet thick, and we felt it. Like an oven it were. He took off as soon as he heard all the screaming. I never saw him again. We just sat in the keep, huddled together, shouting Ella’s name. We got drowned out by the roar of this thing. Like a jet engine at full throttle right next to your ear. I thought we were going to die.’

The old woman put out her hands as if she were about to grab her husband’s face. Her eyes widened. She was snatching at her breath. ‘Oh, Brendan, what about Anne and Stephen?’

‘Oh, bloody hell,’ Brendan said. ‘Bloody, bloody hell.’

It turned out that Anne and Stephen were Ella’s parents. They had gone to The Lakes for their wedding anniversary. Brendan and Angela, Stephen’s parents, had offered to look after Ella for the weekend.

‘She was only six,’ Angela said. ‘She was going to be seven next July.’

Jane said he would go to the battlements to find the body. Angela blanched and shook her head. Brendan touched Jane’s wrist. ‘Thanks, son. But I’ve been out there. I’ve seen…’ He glanced at his wife and checked himself. ‘Nothing could have survived.’

‘We did,’ Chris said. He and Nance had somehow made it across the glass without Jane hearing, or more likely he’d been so horribly engrossed in Brendan’s tale that he’d not registered their approach. Jane shot Chris a look now and the two of them shared secretive glances. They’d obviously made up on their way back. Chris put a protective arm around Nance. Jane felt like telling him that he was welcome to her.

‘I’m heading for London,’ Jane told Brendan. ‘These two are coming with me as far as Newcastle. We’re hoping that whatever hit us – meteor, solar flare…’

‘Wrath of God,’ Chris said.

Jane ignored him. ‘We’re hoping that things might be better the further south we go. Maybe we can find a hospital in Newcastle that can treat your wife. Maybe there’ll be some kind of emergency rescue post. If we survived, then there must be more. Who knows,’ he said, working some optimism into his voice that his heart would not back up, ‘we could set off and in five minutes there’ll be Red Cross helicopters buzzing in from the hills.’

‘Hospital would be good,’ Brendan said. ‘The wife’s got an inhaler and it’s almost run out. She’ll be in a right state if we don’t get her some more. We’ve spent long enough in that bloody castle, wringing our hands over what to do. It’s time to face up to things.’

They kept giving Nance nervous glances and now Jane saw that her feet were still unshod and they were bleeding badly. She was still glassy-eyed from her crazed little jaunt.

‘I’ve got a First Aid kit back at the road,’ he said. ‘We should get you sorted out. An infection is not something you want.’

Four of them started to walk the short distance to Front Street while Brendan hurried back to the castle to collect their things. It was slow going. Angela had to keep stopping to catch her breath. She didn’t so much inhale as seize at the air, her head jerking back as if she’d been punched. Nobody said anything, but Jane could sense Chris and Nance’s dismay. He felt like rounding on them, pointing the finger, telling Nance that if she hadn’t lost it they’d have walked right by and Brendan and Angela would most probably have starved to death in each other’s arms, afraid to re-engage with a world that had burned itself out around them.

Brendan was much more sprightly when he returned. A plan had stiffened him. His eyes no longer seemed like rain made flesh. He had two coats – thin, flimsy affairs – and a canvas bag that held a couple of books and a make-up bag. Jane checked their feet. Brendan wore brown brogues; Angela a pair of deck shoes. He fished out a bicycle mask and handed it to the woman. She put it on and looked at him over the edge of it with expectation, as if this alone might cure her of her disease.

‘We’ll find you some proper clothes and shoes as soon as we can,’ Jane said. ‘All of the cars have been knocked out of order. Electrics fried, or something. So, we have to walk.’ He looked at Angela. ‘Can you manage that?’

‘I’ll try,’ she said, but then she turned to Brendan. ‘Maybe I should stay here. You can come back for me when you get to Newcastle. Find help.’

Brendan was shaking his head almost at the moment she started speaking. ‘No way, love. No. We all go together. We stick together. I’m not leaving you.’

Jane sighed. If they didn’t find some way of transporting Angela they’d be stopping every few minutes. It would take them weeks to get to Newcastle, a distance of around forty miles that he’d have been able to march in four days. He silently cursed Chris and Nance. And Angela and Brendan. He felt a sudden impulse to just take off, to leave them to sort out their problems. He had a son to find. Stanley might be injured. His mother might be dead. The thought of him alone, crying for his daddy, knifed Jane every time he thought of it. There was no build-up of resistance where children were concerned. You didn’t get over the stifling worry, the cotton in the mouth, the frantic slam of the heart. It was the price you paid for love, he supposed. He wanted to articulate this to the others, to offer an apology, when Angela reached out and held his hand. Her skin was surprisingly soft and cool.