Jenni Fagan - The Sunlight Pilgrims

— Youz are all bloody nuts if you think we’ll get through this, a mother agrees.

— Mercy, mercy.

This last note is uttered quietly by another nun. The Mother Superior stares over at her until she looks down at her shoes. A teacher stands up.

— We have all known global warming was occurring. The Arctic is our canary, if you like, it’s going to show the rest of the world what will happen next.

— The canaries died first, the young mother says.

— Look, the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf for example is almost completely gone; that block of ice was there for three thousand years and it only started cracking in the year 2000, and here we are only twenty years later, the polar ice-cap has shrunk by thirty per cent and all that fresh water is flooding the oceans, reducing salinity.

— So now we all just freeze to death, aye? the dad asks.

— No, now we make our plans for how to get through it.

A young man puts his hand up and Stella cannot decide if the nuns are quite cute in their way, with their seriousness and their napkin heads, or if they are in fact completely ridiculous, and the village hall is full of parents and children and old people and teenagers and it is so stuffy and damp in here now that her skin prickles and she yawns widely. Lewis is giggling with a girl in the front row and, despite herself, Stella feels a hot spike of jealousy. They are passing a piece of paper to each other and folding it over. Drawing a person, when each one does a different section and passes it on. She can’t remember the name of the game but they used to play it at school sometimes. She thinks it was an exquisite corpse. Stella scans the hall.

— We don’t have answers long-term but we do have resources! We have drawn up a list of what we think each household needs to get them through winter, including extra water supplies, tinned goods, Mr McBride. We are telling everyone to stock up in advance: make sure you have what you need in food and water, stock your freezers. Make sure you have a back-up heating supply. We have ordered a generator for the community hall and anyone who cannot afford food or heating, especially the elderly and vulnerable, must come to the town hall, where we will be offering shelter, food and companionship for those who need it.

— I’d rather stay at home and die in front of the telly, a young mum mutters.

— We, the Sisters of Beathnoch, are going to do whatever we can to help people on the ground directly. Rising seas are affecting Louisiana, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, regions of Africa; across Europe this devastation is spreading in all directions. You are not the only community facing these problems, but if we pull together many of us will get through it.

That last sentence causes a temporary silence. The nuns look steadily ahead.

Big charts have been placed up around the hall to show exactly what is happening with the weather systems — there are signs for how to keep warm, how to avoid frostbite, how to cool and treat water from snow, how to dig your way out of a snowdrift. One shows a picture of a man digging a hole around the exhaust at the back of his car, so that even in a drift he can keep the engine running; the next picture shows what happens if he doesn’t dig the hole for the exhaust fumes: him and his little boy asleep on the front seat being poisoned by the fumes. There are pictures of an Arctic family with their furry jackets open, staring into a camera. Stella is fascinated by the smallest child who looks just like her when she was little, except the girl has blonde hair rather than black.

Stella looks over at Lewis’s dad and she hasn’t seen him since he had that affair and got kicked out of their caravan again. He is wearing Doc boots and a thick parka and he looks thinner. She used to like going over there for sleepovers and sitting in his tiny bedroom playing computer games. It’s not like she felt like this about Lewis when she was younger, or maybe only a little bit. Lewis is passing the folded drawing along the line and it is being handed up the rows toward her and that flutter of fear in her, and her skin growing hot already.

There is a slight quiet, parents nodding to each other.

— Is Santa okay at the North Pole? a wee girl asks.

— Santa is just fine, the Mother Superior says.

Elaine Brown walks past as if she’s going to the toilet and drops a piece of paper in Stella’s lap. She sits up on her knees and she almost doesn’t want to open it. The kids from her class are facing the front, pretending they’re listening. A minute ago they were just bored and picking on each other and pinching each other and hoping the adults would give up and let them all go. She unfolds the piece of paper. The bottom is a pair of sparkly Rocket Dog sneakers that she wore all summer. Then there are her skinny legs with stripy tights. The top bit has her hair in a long bob, flicked out, and bigger lips than she has, and her usual jumper with only a hint of a bump. And when she opens the middle section of paper she drops it to the floor.

Don’t cry. It would be better to walk out now than to cry in a town hall in front of Lewis and the entire village and everyone from the crofts and farms. Stella scans along the row of nuns’ black shoes and hopes that her mum is not unfolding the piece of paper right now, because she picked it up from the floor. Stella looks along a row of twenty-eight shiny black shoes; above those are black turn-ups and fitted trousers with a chain hanging from each belt, hanging off that a whistle and a torch and a multi-tool with knife, scissors, tweezers; the white hats are peaked like napkins and frame each nun across the middle of her forehead.

— Why don’t you just spell it out: we could all be dead within months, if temperatures hit anything lower than the minus forties by December. We all know it drops another ten degrees here every January, and sometimes again in February.

Constance folds up the piece of paper. Stella can almost hear the folds and her mother running her finger along it, as if to seal the picture in. For an awful moment she thinks her mother is going to stand up and call them out. Lewis looks back and sees her expression and his face falls. On the fourth row she sees what looks like an old woman in a donkey-jacket, but when she turns it is someone’s mum. Constance folds the piece of paper up and her mother’s face is so steely that Stella begins to panic. She looks over to her old classmates and tries not to wish for the gift of telekinesis. The scene in Carrie where the girl sets the whole place on fire sums up exactly how she feels.

— Trains are still running, and most of the airports haven’t closed. I think we should all fly somewhere warmer. Right now we’re here like sitting ducks and nobody knows how bad it is going to get! a man says.

There are paperchains laced all across the ceiling in white and red and green and Stella can see the one she made, ready for the winter festival. Constance looks over at her and she can tell her mum is biting her tongue so hard she can probably taste blood.

— What about Year Six and Sevens: do they still need to do their prep exams for high school?

A young woman stands up to ask this; she is Tabitha the Fanny’s mum. Tabitha lives with her now and she used to be the best girl football player in the whole year, until she broke her ankle and got into porn. Now she sells soiled panties to men in Tokyo, all the way from her council flat over the Clachan Fells bakery. Everyone says her mum already knows and that Tabitha’s bringing money into the house, so she doesn’t care. Tabitha the Fanny once sold it to a man who wanted her to cover herself in baked beans, and her dad found the towels and she had to say she was doing a project for science.

— That is Point Four of today’s meeting, thank you.