Chris Cleave - Incendiary

I closed my eyes and I saw my boy smiling at me. My boy had this extra special smile he did when he wanted to show you all of his teeth at once. He threw his head back and his mouth went wider than his whole face so he looked like one of those monster fish you see in the aquarium. Remembering my boy doing his monster smile I started laughing and then I opened my eyes and I saw the tall towers of the City standing out all solemn against the orange light. I smiled because it was pretty. Then I started to wonder what I was smiling for when I was supposed to be dying. And that made me laugh. I was feeling so good all of a sudden. I looked up at the drip bag with all those crushed-up pills trickling into my arm. That’s when I realised the stupid thing wasn’t killing me at all it was making me feel brilliant.

Then I started feeling angry that I was feeling so brilliant. None of this was getting me dead. I decided to stop mucking about and throw myself out of the window. Like I say Osama once I get an idea in my head I stop thinking about the whys and wherefores. I suppose you could find plenty of work for people like me. So anyway I got out of bed and crawled over to the window and pulled myself up on the frame. I turned the handle and swung the window wide open. Cold air came in and I shivered.

It’s funny because when it comes to the moment you don’t think right okay here I go then and plummet 30 floors to your death. You think oooh isn’t it chilly out? Cold is a funny one. It’s impossible to remember it until you actually feel it. I don’t know if you’ve ever jumped into freezing cold water Osama? Well it’s easier to imagine yourself doing it than actually to do it. Don’t you find? Once you’re standing there on the edge of the mountain lake shivering in your Kalashnikov and Speedos I mean.

So I stood there for the longest time holding myself up on the window frame and shivering in my hospital nightie. Another thing. You don’t notice it getting lighter do you? You just suddenly realise you can see certain things. Now I could see the outlines of the towers at Canary Wharf with the sky all milky behind them. I just stood there with the drip bag dribbling the last of those powdered pills into me and feeling better and better. Soon the sun came up. Flashing through all the brand-new concrete and glass. The dawn crept up on me and I was still alive. And that’s when I saw it all. Everything.

London is a city built on the wreckage of itself Osama. It’s had more comebacks than The Evil Dead . It’s been flattened by storms and flooded out and rotted with plague. Londoners just took a deep breath and put the kettle on. Then the whole thing burned down. Every last stick of it. I remember my mum took me to see the Monument to the Great Fire. London burned WITH INCREDIBLE NOISE AND FURY is what the monument has written on it. People thought it was the end of the world. But the Londoners got up the next day and the world hadn’t ended so they rebuilt the city in 3 years stronger and taller. Even Hitler couldn’t finish us though he set the whole of the East End on fire. Bethnal Green was like hell my grandma said. Just one endless sea of flames. But we got through it. We built on the rubble. We built tower blocks and the NHS and we kept on coming like zombies.

You’ve hurt London Osama but you haven’t finished it you never will. London’s like me it’s too piss poor and ignorant to know when it’s finished. That morning when I looked down at the sun rising through the docklands I knew it for sure. I am London Osama I am the whole world. Murder me with bombs you poor lonely sod I will only build myself again and stronger. I am too stupid to know better I am a woman built on the wreckage of myself.

I looked down on the whole of London spread out under me that morning and I knew it was time for me to go back down into it.

I was walking with a crutch. A grubby aluminium stick with a green plastic handle. Clack clack it went on the pavement. Its soft rubber foot was all worn away. It was just the bare metal end clacking down between the old black blobs of chewing gum and the thin white streaks of pigeon shit. I hoped it wouldn’t slip because then I would slip too. Clack clack clack I walked away from Guy’s Hospital along St. Thomas Street.

My body was mostly healed. I was carrying Mr. Rabbit and 2 bottles of Valium in an Asda carrier bag. It was not warm and not cold. There was no wind and the sky was very low and grey but it wasn’t raining. It was like they’d completely run out of weather. I was wearing my white Adidas trackie bottoms. White Pumas. Red Nike T-shirt with the big white tick. I could of been anyone. It was a great comfort. Jasper brought the clothes to me in hospital. I’d asked him to. I’d given him the spare keys to the flat. Clack clack clack.

It was an effort walking with the crutch. I was tired and out of breath. I’d lain 8 weeks in bed after all. I sat down at a bus stop on an orange plastic bench. It made me dizzy to watch the people rushing all around. I took deep breaths. I just watched my Pumas on the pavement. My crutch had a label on it held on with Sellotape. PROPERTY OF GUY’S HOSPITAL it said NOT TO BE TAKEN AWAY. Well I peeled that label off. I was on my way to see a copper after all and there was no point in taking chances. I scrunched the label into a ball. I looked around for a rubbish bin but there weren’t any. They’d taken them away in case anyone tampered with them. There were no rubbish bins any more and no Muslims with jobs. We were all much safer.

I dropped the scrunched-up label on the ground. There was an old dear on the bench next to me. Like I say it wasn’t cold but she was wearing a big fur coat. The kind of coat that might of cost 10 thousand quid at Harrods or a fiver at Barnardo’s you couldn’t tell. She hissed like a cat when I dropped that ball of paper and Sellotape. She had purple lippie on.

—Do you mind? she said.

I looked at her and I saw just what she would look like with her guts blown out and her cheeks burned off till you could see her false teeth clattering loose in her gob. Clack clack clack.

—Sorry.

I picked up my litter and I put it in my pocket.

—Good girl, said the old dear. That’s the spirit. Are you waiting for the 705?

—I don’t know. I’m just resting. I’m ever so tired.

—Where are you trying to get to love? said the old dear.

—Scotland Yard. I’m going to see a copper.

—Oooh dear, she said. I hope you’re not in some kind of trouble.

She shuffled away from me on the bench like she was afraid of catching something off me.

—No. I’m not in trouble. I’m going to see a copper who works there. He used to be my husband’s super. Because my husband and my boy are both dead you see they were blown up and all they found was their teeth and Mr. Rabbit. Would you like to see Mr. Rabbit?

—No thanks darling, said the old dear. You’re alright.

The old dear looked at me for the longest time without saying anything. The traffic roared past us. She had these small thick glasses on and her eyes looked like cheap sweets behind them.

—Well love, she said. If you’re going to Scotland Yard then you need the 705. Take it till just after Waterloo then you might as well walk over Westminster Bridge. After that you want Victoria Street don’t you.

She didn’t say anything else. We waited for the 705 and when it came I sat near the front and the old dear went upstairs. Even though she was old and there were lots of empty seats on the bottom deck. I was crying a bit. I put my hand inside the carrier bag where I could stroke Mr. Rabbit in secret while London went past outside the bus windows keeping itself busy. I got off too early. I mean you always do on a new bus don’t you? I got off at Waterloo Station and I should of waited until a couple of stops later. At Waterloo Station was where it happened. I was getting off the bus all wobbly on my crutch and I saw my boy.