CHAPTER 2
The boy watched the water stream into the watering can and listened to the drum it made as the can slowly filled. He held the watering can carefully under the tap then when it was nearly full quickly turned off the tap as quickly as he could whilst straining to hold the green can under the flow. He took a deep breath and lifting the watering can by its top handle carried it with two hands. He crossed the cracked concrete path, with the water sloshing, and the can in front of him, banging into his knees. He walked carefully along the grass path that stretched alongside his grandfather’s allotment until he reached the row of potatoes he was going to water.
It was early morning but already hot. The sun shone violently and languidly traced its arc across the clear sky like the staring eyes of a madman, intense and desolate, slow and inexorable. Despite a lot of work the earth was still a heavy clay and consequently cracked like a senile face. The earth drank the water as if it was saline; its thirst only increasing with each drop. The boy emptied the can and went back to the tap as if he was repeating a ritual; repeating the rosary, a prayer of contrition and penance to the burnt earth.
The boy turned to look at his grandfather as the can filled. The old man was adjusting the ties on some tomatoes, his hat was pulled low, his sleeves were rolled up and his braces held up trousers which the old man seemed to be shrinking out of. Satisfied with the knots the old man stepped back then stooped for his own watering can and walked down the path towards the concrete, towards the tap and the boy.
The old man looked at his grandson; his big eyes, his mother’s eyes, dark and insightful. The work would put muscles on the boy but now he was just a string bean, tall for his age but still there was a lot of growing to be done. And the boy could eat which was good but a worry when food supplies weren’t certain. The old man was a child of the times of plenty. The old man's father had fought in the war and his mother had known rationing but rationing was different, equal shares …now ….with the fighting and the terrorism and the insurgency. Prices were terrible but money was no good when the shops were empty and the black market … Dig for Victory … like his grandfather … no more South African strawberries in February … although with the way things were going maybe one day it’ll be hot enough to grow strawberries in England in February but not yet … anyway maybe the Atlantic conveyor would fail and the island would freeze … still he thought, filling up the watering can as the boy struggled off, what future for the boy. School was irregular, food was uncertain, the army might get him or the sniper … a road side bomb or TB. Whatever happened to the future? The millennium came, the Warming came, the long war came… like the fall of the Roman Republic politicians seized power and suppressed freedoms in the name of stability … the death squads came … the sniper came … the terrorists and the gangsters seemed to look less evil … the former even if some of them were religious crazies stood up and fought the government … a government who hated the boy and his dead mother and his dead father “the race traitor” … and the latter doing something at least like pagan kings … trying to build something … trying to hold something together … while the new Dark Ages swell … someone to carry the light and knowledge while civilisation is at its nadir.
Dark thoughts today, the old man mused, what’s brought this on? It’s that damn sniper. Three dead yesterday, he’s getting more regular. At first a month would go by, two months without him. Then you’re queuing for bread and the person at the corner of the street is on the floor clutching their shoulder or half their head is gone and you clutch at the boy’s hand and drag him as he stares but which way to run? Where’s the killing zone? Where does he have line of sight? You’re flat against the wall, a nice still target, crouched down, shielding the boy and you wonder why. One high velocity round will go through both of you but you can’t help it. You shield. You protect. Is it over for another day? Has the sniper gone or is he waiting? Motherfucka, I’d kill him with my bare hands. Dark thoughts today.
When the morning chores were finished, the old man and his grandson made their way up the slight hill to the allotment gates. Outside the gates, a security patrol was passing. The old man and the boy watched stonily as two six legged trucks and one eight legged all terrain vehicle scuttled past on their respective insectile or arachnid legs. The troops loaded inside must be cooking, trapped inside their personal armour shells, inside their armoured vehicle. A camera on one of the trucks studied them for a moment then moved on to peruse a skip overflowing with rubbish twenty meters in front. They had patrolled Braunstone and now were moving towards the old railway tracks and the major security arteries. The legs of the vehicles thudded softly on the cracked and potholed road. The trucks finally reached the bridge over the tracks and. moving to one side of it, delicately went single file down the embankment to the tracks below. Waiting till last, the arachnid turned 180 degrees, stopped for a moment and stamped its second back, from the front, left leg several times, like a person tapping a forefinger, before it went down the embankment backwards.
“All thorax and no brains,” muttered the old man as the headless machines disappeared out of sight. They followed the patrol till the bridge, which they crossed, then went down the path, across a small road, down an overgrown track and walked up the Hinckley Road home. They lived in a three storey house which had been converted into flats in the 20th century then converted back by the tenants as the population density fell and flats became permanently empty and houses got boarded up. The rats and the buddleia took occupation of houses and gardens whilst the Victorian trees died of thirst. The house was cool and the old man went into the downstairs backroom and turned the tap to make some coffee but the tap coughed in response and turned sullen.
“Andrew, go to the shops and get some water tokens please,” the boy nodded and, taking a few of £100 coins from the old man, ran off. He returned quickly and the kettle was ready with water by the start of the morning Power Hour.
The old man took his coffee and went down into the cellar to check the batteries then returning upstairs he switched on the clockwork radio to listen to the official news and weather.
With the shipping forecast over, he started washing the pots from the night before and, humming to himself, thought about Winston Smith watching the washer woman and what Eric Blair would make of it all.
His back ached from carrying the watering can, back and forth, and he dreamed of the luxury of having a bath; mmmhhh to lie relaxing and half floating in hot steaming water, to submerge beneath the surface and then resurface, blowing water droplets in curving arcs away from your face, and bask. Water symbol of life, symbol of purification. To just bathe in it like a lotus.
“Grandpa, we’ve run out of wood.”
So tonight I must be Zhivago and steal firewood, thought the old man. Destroy a little more of the city to survive, “What did you want it for?”
“I’m hungry. I wanted to heat some beans.”
“Use the gas stove, it’s OK,” he said smiling at the worried expression of the boy. “It’s OK really. We can afford it.”
Andy sat in a shady nest amidst the rubble with John who was older, taller and tougher.
“What’s up durka?”
Andy glared, “I’m not a durka.” His grandpa said that there had used to be a police station here but it had been blown up a few years into the Chaos and now the piles of bricks, concrete and twisted steel supports were being colonised by grasses, nettles and buddleia whose dense purple panicles attracted the eye and butterflies -- the Chaos had been good for a small number of butterfly species, Andy’s grandpa had said with a wry grin. “Why are you always calling me that?” said Andy resentfully.
“I don’t mean nothing by it, you little clit,” said John, idly cleaning under his nails with his penknife.
“You’re always calling me names.” Andy threw a rock at the nearest of the targets and missed. John aimed and hit the target next furthest away.
“Stop being a girl.”
Andy said nothing for a few moments then said, “What’s an it?”
“Wha’?”
“What you just called me, an it.”
“A clit -- it’s a girl thing.”
Andy felt himself flush with both embarrassment and curiosity.
“Well what it is? You’re making it up.”
“No I’m not,” said John feeling challenged, “you mean you don’t know. You don’t even know what a clit is?”
“No,” said Andy matter-of-factly, “and I think you’re just making it up, ‘cause you’re stupid.” The latter Andy said with a drawl of derision.
John looked at Andy with raised eyebrows and said icily, “I will fuck you up.”
Andy fidgeted and threw a stone at the nearest target, hitting it this time.
“What’s an it John?” he asked cautiously, glancing at the older boy out of the corner of his eye and looking away again quickly and at the ground then continuing to fidget and starting to pick his nose.
John threw another stone successfully at the number 2 target. He pinched his nose and scratched his upper lip and said, “ A clit is a hole between a woman’s arse and her fanny.”
“Wha’?”
“If I was doing some bird up the arse. Spunked off and it leaked through her clit into her fanny and got her pregnant then she’d have a black baby. That’s how you get black babies by doing girls up the arse.” He threw another stone but missed.
Andy sat with his mouth open. “You’re a liar.”
John lay back and put his hands behind his head.
“That’s just rubbish. Yer skin colour’s from yer DNA, yer genes, it’s got nothing to do with ... with what u said. (Pain in the neck) ... Crick and (Sherlock) Dr Watson, “ said Andy; muttering the last part, the names and their mnemonics, under his breath.
“That’s what you think. You’d never even heard of the clit,” said John sitting up, “you think you’re so smart. Well maybe you don’t know everything.”
“You’re making it up. The it doesn’t exist. You’re a liar.”
“Right let’s go ask my sister if it exists. She’ll tell you and then you’ll see.” John stood up angrily and they both marched off, scrambling over the rubble to the road and walked up to a group of older girls sitting in the shade of the wall of a crumbling church and passing a spliff.
“Go on ask Lucy if it exists.”
In response Andy opened his mouth and then shut it again embarrassed.
“Go on big man if you think you’re so clever ask her if it exists.”
“What do you two twats want? “ said Vicky, a blond and pretty girl with a vicious temper, “we’re having a private conversation.” Debbie was hogging the joint and Vicky was next and getting impatient.
“Well?” said Lucy lazily.
“What’s an it?” said Andy with his face burning.
“Wha’,” said Vicky.
“He means a clit. He ... ,” John trailed off as he was drowned out as the girls howled with laughter. Andy scanned the girls laughing faces, turned and ran. Confused, embarrassed, angry and aroused he fled over and down the hill to the dried up culvert under the road where he paced in the darkness, reliving his humiliation. It didn’t make sense. He didn’t understand. It was racist. He knew it was DNA, he knew it was inheritance but the way they had laughed. He wanted to cry but couldn’t and walked backwards and forwards in the dark tunnel, kicking stones until finally he sat and scratched at the concrete wall with a stone, flaking off painted graffiti.
Andy strolled out of the subway towards the three storey apartment block listening on his aural jack to the Red Sox game. The front of the building was set back from the street behind a group of young orange trees. The façade was a mosaic of blue, yellow and red ceramic tiles - a brash celebration of electricity generating paint in multiple hues in contrast to the previously ubiquitous municipal green paint of the previous decade – green for maximum light absorption and electricity generation. The Boston sunlight beat down overhead and the world was good as he ran up the steps towards the main doors.
When he made it to the apartment door it opened and they fell into each other’s arms, “Are you hungry?” she asked and he laughed, “I mean for food,” she continued.
“For everything,” he replied. She led him into the tiny kitchen, which overlooked what during most on the day was a central quad; with lemon trees, seats and a fountain, and various reclining houris and/or female students with or without companions.
“Bacon in a tomato and basil sauce?”
“Perfect.”
He made them both a coffee and put the game on the screen whilst she cooked.
They ate the meal with a glass of water and for a moment as he ate he gazed into it bewitched, smiling and beguiled.
They shared her single bed - but she had demurred at first because she had her period and he had laughed and the blood became a sacrament and she had reached down between her legs, and with her hand covered in menstrual fluid and semen pressed her hand against the wall, fingers splayed, as if the room was their cave and she was enacting a primal rite. He held her and breathed her scent, breathed deep and long, aching gently with the fine pain of exercise and love. He felt something akin to a knot in his stomach. It was like fear - like stage fright, an almost uncontrollable bursting of excitement. He was sated and at peace yet spinning and bubbling - it was a most incongruous sensation - yet delicious. It grew dark and she slept and he listened to her breathe as he lay with one arm around her and the other supporting his head. Her skin was warm with blood and he imagined the corpuscles racing around her circulatory system, back to her heart then pumped nearer to his head as they were pushed up, or rather since they were lying down - across, to her sleeping, perhaps dreaming brain. Bumping swirling bi-concave discs taking oxygen to every cell, the blood growing slowly darker before back to the right ventricle and on to the lungs to be enriched once more with oxygen and deliver up its load of carbon dioxide. He breathed deeply and wondered about the syncopation of their hearts. Here I am in a universe 13.7 billion years old on a ball 5 billion years old, my body is 22 years old and hers is 20, many millions of our atoms where once inside stars and super nova. I am … and she is … just bits of the universe that are awake, or at least I’m awake, he smiled at the double meaning and grabbed his balls, at this moment I am awake and aware. Simply a bit of matter, stuff, not intrinsically different from a rock yet organised by evolution into this thinking monkey ape – this wise man lying here and now with this wise woman in all the vastness of time and all the vastness of space. On one planet around a star in the Orion arm of the Milky Way, one star of maybe 250 billion stars which is one large galaxy among maybe 500 billion galaxies. And if a bullet averages about 1 km per second and the speed of light is 300,000 km per second then quite obviously it would take a bullet 300,000 years to travel a light year and Alpha Centauri is 4 and half light years from here and Galactic Centre is 26,000 light years away and Andromeda is 2 and half million light years away and there are galaxies more than 13 billion light years away. I lie here with her and my mind is so small and bright in the yawning chasm of space and time. If scarcity means something is valuable then how valuable is now. Diamonds are but gimcracks. This moment so fragile. He kissed her shoulder and whispered, “We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.” She slept on and he snuggled beside her and closed his eyes.