From the Neck Up and Other Stories Read online

  “What kind of way?”

  “Friends,” he says, simply. “We were friends.”

  I feel something open within me. It is pride, flowering. I’m proud of this man, this stranger, who would call a prickly old lady a friend. A description of equal terms.

  “Help me up,” I say.

  He stands and holds out his hands once more, and this time I let him pull me up. We emerge from the plants and stand on the walkway, side by side. The dome looks different. Perhaps the lights have started to dim as part of the cycle. Soon the sprinklers will kick in.

  “The storeroom,” I say. “Why did you want to get in there?”

  “Daisy said there were materials.” He wets his lips. “Paint.”

  “You want paint?”

  “Not a lot. Just a little.”

  The way he says it tells me that Daisy has told him about this side of my personality too.

  “Right. Right.”

  He knows that I have the code to the storeroom and he didn’t pressure me for it. Is that decency or manipulation on his part?

  Either way, it helps me to make a decision. “I’ll let you in. But I won’t give you the code. You only come in and out with me, understood?”

  “Certainly. It’s your space, after all.”

  Does he really believe that? He’s wily enough to keep any streak of sarcasm out of his voice.

  Either way, the deal is done. We walk along together and talk of what life is like for a child on the outside. I wonder if Blossom Farm should have given their jobs to the very young, rather than the very old. But it makes perfect sense. I’m ashamed to realise that the old are so much easier to control.

  PART TWO

  I no longer have a blanket.

  But this doesn’t matter, because I no longer have a room.

  “It’s a reallocation to make sure everyone gets a place to sleep,” says the woman standing in my doorway. Behind her, another woman is sitting at my small table polishing a long knife with a cloth, taking care not to look at me. “Go to the common room and they’ll set you up.”

  “But this is my room,” I say. All I want is to get inside it. Coming back down the corridor from the storeroom, I was thinking only about the fact that I had no blanket. What was I going to do? No warm blanket anymore. It’s strange how quickly priorities can change.

  “We all have to make sacrifices,” says the woman in the doorway. “It’s not that you don’t have a place to sleep. It’s just this is a big room and we thought the original workers might want to stick together, so you’ll have been allocated a place with your own kind.” She nibbles her cracked bottom lip; the change in temperature must be playing havoc with her skin.

  “So off you trot,” says the woman with the knife, who looks as clean and brutal as a teenager. She doesn’t even bother to make eye contact with me. She is a parody of a threat, like she’s practised it for hours and is now happy to seize her chance.

  “Keep your knickers on,” I tell her. I’ve had a bad enough day to no longer care. Besides, she’s obviously all bark and no bite. Who seriously polishes a knife just to scare an old lady?

  “We could throw you out in the cold instead,” she says. Something in her voice suggests this isn’t the first time she’s thought of this idea, or voiced it.

  The other woman, the one at my door, says, “I put your stuff in here.” She reaches around the door and brings out a white plastic sack, half full. I take it and look inside: my clothes, books, hairbrush and cream for my legs when they ache. Not my slides. They must still be under the bed. I can’t leave them behind. But carrying them would be a job for more than one person, and where would I put them? How would I explain them? The one with the knife – she would smash them if she suspected they were important to me. I’m beginning to recognise this look some of them have, as if the things they’ve experienced outside will justify the things they do in here.

  “Thanks,” I say, to the one at the door. I set off for the common room. It’s nearly dinner time and my body is hurting. It will only get worse tomorrow. I want my bed. I want my slides, my happy places. I want. I want my blanket.

  I want to see Daisy. I want her to ignore me over dinner, sitting at a different table, feeling hatred, feeling disgust, just feeling something personal and real and Daisyish at me.

  Earlier, in the storeroom, Lucas said, “Look at all the stuff in here. People get killed for this outside. Petrol. Look. Batteries. Torches. Inflatable tents. Solar warmers.” He spoke softly, in awe, as if entering a cathedral.

  “I thought you wanted paint,” I said, watching him from the door. “It’s against the far wall.”

  “Thanks.” But he didn’t move quickly. He examined each shelf in turn: top, middle, bottom, as he walked down the rows. “How come they gave you access to this place? They must really trust you.”

  “I was friends with the supervisor before Mr Cecil,” I said.

  “I thought you were… friends with Daisy?”

  “I thought you of all people would understand there’s more than one kind of friend in the world.”

  Mr Taylor, I had called him, once I worked for him. Once upon a time, in a classroom not too far away, he had called me Miss Baris. He was a good boy, although he didn’t believe it, and he turned into a better man. When it all went wrong he came for me.

  “What are these?” asked Lucas. He touched my slides, the ones that I painted and left behind in the storeroom; the ones that I didn’t want to be reminded of so often, unless a dark mood took me.

  “Nothing.”

  He picked one at random and held it up. It was a painting of a day I never want to think about. Another day of goodbyes, years ago.

  * * *

  Slide 58

  She counted them getting onto the bus, and she counted them leaving it, even though they could not have gone anywhere during the journey. Old habits. There were only five of them left. They didn’t even sit together on the thirty-minute trip to the port but spaced themselves evenly throughout the bus, leaving a pattern of empty seats. Miss Baris wished there was some way she could tell them they needed each other but she had been a teacher long enough to know that children never, ever believed such sentiments. They thought themselves invincible, and maybe that would be enough to get them through.

  They gathered in front of the doors to Departures, the kids shivering even in their expensive coats. A light sleet was falling. It looked like snow if you stared up into it, but on the skin and on the concrete it was grey, and wet, and dull.

  “Let’s run through it again,” said Miss Baris, and they all groaned as one. At least they were united in some things. “Natalya, start us off.”

  “Number one: stay together at all times,” said the smallest girl, so small. So eager to please with her prompt reply and her smart manners.

  “Omar?”

  “Number two: board the ferry and don’t speak to anyone except the people in charge.” He was a pain in class, big and bullish, but if any of them had grasped the seriousness of the situation it was him, and she saw a determination in his eyes that gave her hope for them all.

  “Quentin, number three.”

  The boy gaped at her. He wasn’t the brightest, but he had a soft heart and loved all animals, choosing to spend most of his time in the school stables. He had told her once that he wanted to study to become a vet, and she had told him to work hard. That was what teachers said in the face of unrealistic dreams.

  “Disembark at…” she prompted him.

  “Disembark at Bilbao and use the Euros to pay for a taxi to the train station. From there get tickets to Madrid.”

  “Well done,” she said. “Number four. Lupita.”

  “Once we arrive in Madrid, get to the Russian Embassy. Ask for our parents to be contacted,” said Lupita, in a bored voice. She wanted so much to be the ideal woman and ended up looking more like a child than any of them with her hitched-up skirt and her practised, sulky attitude. She was the weakest link. If she fe
lt the urge to wander off, she would, and the rest would fall apart in her absence.

  “I’m relying on you, Lupita,” Miss Baris said, knowing it wouldn’t help but unable to stop herself. “Five, Dimitri.”

  “Five. Stay together at all times,” recited Dimitri, the cheeky one, working on becoming tall and handsome and trouble to the world in general. “Miss, why is rule five the same as rule one?”

  Lupita nudged him. “Because it’s the most important, you moron.”

  “We don’t call each other morons, Lupita,” said Miss Baris.

  “And our parents will pick us up there?” asked Natalya.

  “That’s right.” Lies came so easily to teachers. She had long since learned to ignore any twinge of conscience. She was the last teacher left in the school and these were the last pupils. There would soon be no more food, no more light, no more heating. After the extortionate cost of bribing the official to secure five places on the ferry, there was simply no more money.

  And at the other end, what happens then? She had contacted so many people, trying to get hold of the parents who hadn’t bothered to come for their own children when the Gulf Stream began to fail. Powerful people. Dignitaries, celebrities, billionaires. She had to hope that her failure to reach them could be put right by the Embassy. Two of the children had that nationality, at least, and she had sent them an email informing them that any attempt to split up these children would result in the press being contacted. She had an inkling the kids could also make bargaining chips against other countries, but knew next to nothing about politics.

  Stop, she told herself, stop. You’ve done the best that you could do.

  “Aren’t you coming, Miss?” said Omar, managing to look vulnerable.

  “No, I’m needed here,” she said. “But you are all capable of doing this. I have great faith in you all. Just make sure you stay together.”

  They groaned.

  “Right,” she said. “Off you go.”

  They did. They walked through the doors without looking back, because this was an adventure and she was only a teacher.

  Back at the bus, she sat behind the wheel until the ferry had swung away from the dock. Then she took the printed email and the map from her coat pocket and read the words through again.

  I hope you remember me. Billy Taylor; I was in your biology class fifteen years ago at Portsdown. You taught me about plants. I was fascinated. You made it all seem so important. I went on to study Agriculture at college and I work for Blossom Farm now. Have you heard of them? They have a series of bio-farms not far from the school. They’re employing older people, dependable people, to look after the plants, and I thought of you. You inspired me.

  Would you consider coming here? I don’t know what’s happening to this country, but I heard the school was closing as everyone with enough money to get away was leaving, like rats on a sinking ship, I suppose. I don’t know if you remember that English never was my strongest subject. But if you are staying in the UK and you need a place to go then you are welcome here. I’ve enclosed a map. When you arrive ask the guards at the gate to page me. It’s warm and safe, and I can get you a good room of your own.

  Miss Baris started the engine, and drove away, hoping the roads were still clear enough to make it through.

  * * *

  “Is it a bus?” said Lucas.

  “Can’t you tell?” I said.

  He frowned at it, then put it back on the pile. He carried on looking around the treasures of the storeroom, and said quietly, “I won’t tell anyone about this place, okay?”

  “Why don’t I believe you?”

  He said, “Something tells me you’re a scientist at heart. Don’t believe anything until it’s proved, that’s what you think. So just wait and I’ll prove it to you. You don’t have much choice, anyway.”

  “That’s true,” I said.

  He picked up a paint tin, then reached for the signs. “Can I take these too? I like to paint. I’m no good at it either. Well, I wasn’t. Back when I was little. I can remember it: a warm room, some paper, a painting kit. Colours. I’d like to get good at it, some day. Maybe we should both get some practice in.”

  “I don’t do it to be good at it.”

  “No. I can understand that.” He was so very reasonable that it hurt.

  He came back to me, at the door, loaded up with his spoils, and said, “I think us painters should stick together.”

  And even though I knew he was saying it only for his own reasons, I heard myself saying, “Yes.” Yes, with the memory of another time, another instruction to stick together, in my mind. Rules one and five are still with me, even if I don’t look at the black lines on the glass that make up that bus journey. “Yes,” I said. “Stick together.”

  I reach the common room and find it filled with confused old people to whom I don’t want to belong. It turns out the room allocations are not going smoothly after all.

  * * *

  It’s not that anybody is obviously angry. Maybe you get too old to show anger, visibly, even if you’re never too old to feel it. But there are so many people in the common room who are unhappy, crying, standing around with white plastic sacks in hand, and I join them, push my way through the groups, looking for somebody in charge.

  By the archway to the refectory is a cluster of young people, all women; I recognise one of them. She took Daisy away earlier. She holds a clipboard and the others are gathered around it, frowning. Some of them are wearing pagers and utility belts that must have once belonged to the supervisors.

  Lucas isn’t here, and neither is the leader – Stephan, he called himself. Room allocation is obviously not an important topic to those in charge. I’m thinking they must already be ensconced in the supervisors’ old rooms. No question of double bunking in those.

  I watch them squabble over the clipboard for a while. This could take all night, and I’m not brave enough to approach them.

  “Mel.”

  Jim is behind me with Lonnie in tow.

  “Have they taken your room?” He gives me a sympathetic smile. “I suppose that would be the first one they’d want. It is the biggest of the workers’ rooms.”

  He’s not holding a white plastic sack, I notice. “At least you’re okay,” I say, trying to sound friendly.

  “Well, since we’re a two sharing already I expect it makes more sense to let us keep the space. But we were thinking – if you need a place to sleep, come bunk with us. We have spare blankets and a pillow. It’s still sleeping on the floor, but I don’t think anybody is going to find a bed of their own tonight.”

  His generosity shames me. Of course, he wants something. Everybody does. But even so, it’s no small thing to give up your personal space. And it’s the best offer I’m going to get.

  “Thank you,” I say. “Thanks Lonnie.”

  Her smile is a little more lopsided than Jim’s. I’m guessing she’s not quite so keen on the idea as he is. Still, she doesn’t complain as we leave the common room behind.

  Their room is smaller than mine and there are more personal touches evident, from a stack of books to photographs of young people – people from the past, I should say – stuck to the walls and looking straight at me. The bed has a stack of crocheted blankets upon it. That’s Lonnie’s hobby. I don’t know how she got hold of so much wool over the years. What does she trade to indulge her hobby? I’m starting to see that my knowledge of Blossom Farm only scratches the surface. I know it geographically; socially, now that’s a different matter.

  “You’ll be okay,” Jim says, as he lays things on the floor: the blankets, the pillow. We take it in turns to use the adjoining bathroom and I hate the smell of it. The smell of them, scrunched up together in their own sweat, neither of them able to tell their scents apart. Lonnie removes her enormous earrings and leaves them by the bed, ready for the morning.

  Then we’re three old people in standard green flannel pyjamas, so laughable, being polite to each other. Am I ready for light
s out? Jim asks me, courteously. I tell him yes. It’s only once the dim light is out and everyone is tucked up in bed that Jim begins to speak and say real things. This is why I’m here. So that I can’t just walk away.

  “It’s us and them,” he says, softly, into the dark. “Us and them, Mel, and they want us to think it’s not, but we’re not stupid. They say Blossom Farm has been using us, cheap compliant labour, practically slaves, but they’re no different. They’re worse, with their pretence of equality and their big statements: food for all, freedom. They’ll just run this place into the ground because they know nothing about plants, do they? Nothing.”

  “No,” I whisper. They know a lot about being cold and frozen inside, and about hating us. But we’re catching up fast.

  “Blossom Farm won’t stand for it. I talked to this Stephan, man to man. I said I was the representative for the workers, somebody has to be. Stephan said all the supervisors and guards were escorted away, but we can stay and keep working – that’s part of the deal. He says there’s going to be a profit-sharing agreement for a peaceful solution. But Blossom Farm would never agree to that, would they?”

  “No.”

  Stephan said the guards and Mr Cecil left. But I saw the mounds in the snow. I could start a war here with just a few words. If I just describe those mounds, Jim will start to mobilise us all with the righteous ire of the fed and warm and unimaginative.

  Jim talks and talks and talks.

  I feel a new sense of sympathy for Lonnie by the time my eyes start to close, regardless of the endless sound of Jim’s voice. He’s busy talking himself into importance. Has he done this every night since the terrorists came? No wonder she looks so tired.

  * * *

  The sound jolts me from sleep.

  At first I think something heavy has been thrown against the door but then it comes again, shaking me all the way into wakefulness, and I realise it’s so much bigger than that. Something has been thrown against the domes.