Torchwood First Born (18 page)

Jenny's been ever so odd ever since - almost like she's in a coma. She just kept to herself at the back of the hall and didn't speak. In the morning I noticed she was still sat there. I swear she hadn't moved all night. But the others... they were a little apart from her. As I said, I assumed it was sheepishness. Or shame. But it was something else entirely. Oh my goodness. It was... They were... different. They were colder. They'd withdrawn from her. They were all watching me instead. It was like they were... Oh...'

She shrugged helplessly. 'You a dog or a cat person, Gwen?'

'I want a dog,' said Rhys.

'Little Anwen's more than enough of a handful,'

I said.

'Yes,' said Mrs Harries, and I think we'd slightly annoyed her. 'It was like they'd gone from wide-eyed puppies to hunting animals. They were sharp.

Instead of blank, they were guarded. As though they were all plotting. They frightened me. They were so polite. But it was... sarcastic? Is that the right word?

I got scared. When Nerys turned up -' (I noticed Rhys start at her name) - 'When Nerys turned up to look after them for a couple of hours, I came up here yesterday to see how you were. And for a chat.

But you...'

'No,' I was firm. 'Not ready then.'

'So I went back. Tried to teach them a lesson.

French.'

She talked on, going through the minutiae of the day. 'But it was like they didn't want to learn any more. One of them asked, "Why do we learn lessons, Mrs Harries?" I explained how important it was to learn. To grow. He waved it away. '"Yes, that's all very well. But what about you? Do you ever learn lessons?" I said, "Sometimes. Yes. I mean, when we're at school and of course sometimes in later life.

But we don't learn like you do." When I said that, he smirked and said, "No, no, you don't.'" She shook her head, shuddering. 'I should have understood then. What would happen later. I just didn't think it through. I didn't realise.' She leaned back in the chair, wrapping her arms around her tightly. Like she was knocking the air out of her lungs. 'They laughed then. They never laugh. But they did then.

A shared joke.

'The lesson went on pretty much as normal, but it was like I was talking to them and they weren't listening. I'd see a smile break out from time to time

- the same smile but on different children. Rippling gently across the room. It was almost as though they were pretending to take notice of me. To care. But it was all a fake. I carried on teaching them. But it was strange. The sentences I wrote out for them.
L'eau
est chaud. L'eau est tres tres chaud. I 'eau est trop
chaud pour maman.'

'Oh my god,' said Rhys. I felt a bit sick in my stomach.

'They were planning it, even then,' said Mrs Harries.

M e g a n Harries

They waited until the sun set. Until it was evening.

Then they stood up.

Thanks for the lesson, Mother,' said Peter, with that little sarcastic smile. 'But it's time to teach you all a lesson of our own.'

They filed out. I cried out to them, told them to think, that if they acted rashly the village wouldn't be the same, that there'd be retaliation... but Peter just turned and looked at me in the doorway, shrugged and said, 'Whatever.'

I didn't know what to do. I thought about running after them but I didn't want... I didn't want them harmed. I didn't know what they were up to.

They told me later what was going on. Billy's dad got home from work. Poor Davydd, pulling up in his tiny, beat-up old car. And there they were.

The Scions. Ringing the house. Standing, staring in.

Blocking his way.

He tried fighting past them, to get inside. The whole thing was lit up like the fairground by the headlights from his car. Pretty soon people were twitching curtains and coming out of the pub to look.

Davydd had started shouting, and the others were trying too. That's when I turned up. I wanted to reason with them. But they weren't seeing sense.

They weren't listening. They were just stood there, holding hands.

Someone threw a punch, but the kid didn't even show that it connected.

'My wife's in there!' Davydd started yelling, over and over.

One of the Scions, my lovely Peter, acknowledged him. Tour son is in there, too.'

That's when Davydd broke down, howling.

Shortly afterwards the noises came from inside the house. Terrible noises.

None of us could do anything.

I have never felt more helpless.

When the people realised it wasn't going to work, they started arguing with me. Blaming me. Ordering me to do something.

They won't listen to me any more. They won't listen to any one.

That's when I caught the expression on my Peter's face. It was a nasty little smile: If only you knew, Mum, if only you knew.' Oh it was horrible.

Of course, someone called an ambulance... but no one came. There's always been a problem with mobiles, but even the landlines are down now. We're cut off. The world is leaving us alone... alone with these children.

They stood there the whole night, you know, circling that little house. Those strange, dreadful flowers grew up around their feet. And the children just stood there, smiling.

G w e n

It was a lot to take in. Worse because I'd seen it all happen.

There was Megan Harries, arms folded, cold mug of tea at her side, staring patiently at me, a little expectant smile on her tired face. As though I was expected to do something. Why did everyone always expect me to do something? I held Anwen closer, tighter, and tried to think. What would old Gwen say at this point?

'And no one called the police?'

Tony Brown?' Mrs Harries clucked with disdain.

'No bloody good. Never was. Never would be. Years we spent thinking he was just a stupid, fat drunk...

but now it's obvious. He's been working for THEM

all along.'

'Them?' I said before I thought about it. Whenever someone says 'THEM' you always fear they're about to start talking about foreigners, the EU, or...

'Well, the government, dear.' Oh yes. Or them. 'I mean, someone's had to keep an eye on the village.

Make sure we never got much outside help, didn't talk to the wrong people. Made sure the mobile phone companies never got to put up a mast, that the planning proposal for a supermarket was abandoned, that the caravan park got shut down...' She waved her hands around. 'It's odd, isn't it? You assume it would require - I don't know - brainwashing? Guards and things.' She chuckled. 'But you can control a village ever so easily. Make sure a few people are looking the other way, that everyone's pretty much in on the secret, that everyone's got too much to lose... What are we like?'

I squeezed her hand. She squeezed it back. When she spoke again there was a splinter in her voice.

They were my children. They were good enough...

They were good enough for me... What happened to my babies?'

I sat there, trying to pay close attention while patting the wind out of Anwen and silently mopping up a tiny puddle of baby vom on my shoulder. Gwen says always to use a bib, and she's right of course, but sometimes it's the tiny acts of rebellion that mean the most, yes?

The two women sat there, hugging. Mrs Harries old and desolate and Gwen charging up, more awake and energised than I'd seen her for months. Almost like she was sucking the life out of the poor old woman.

'Haven't you forgotten something?' I asked.

Gwen shot me a look. Not now, it said clearly.

With an undertone of Put The Kettle On. But there are times, bless her, times when she doesn't know best.

The Secret Underground Base.'

Mrs Harries looked at me. The Weather Station?'

I nodded.

'We've just... why, what can Eloise do? We all know she and Tom just sit up there, doing some kind of research on the Scions.'

'Well,' I pressed on, 'if there has been a change

- and they're supposed to be looking after the kids -

well, don't you think they'd know about it?'

Mrs Harries clucked. 'Oh, poor Eloise. She's probably rushed off her feet trying to keep up with it all. No wonder Tom didn't come home.'

'What?'

'No dear, poor Josh says there hasn't been a sign of him.'

Gwen stood up, making her own cup of tea a little too loudly. 'Something's wrong up there,' she said, dragging a teaspoon round a mug like it was Quasimodo's bell. 'I'm going to go and investigate.'

'No,' I shouted. I hadn't meant to shout. I lowered my voice a lot. 'I mean... It's wrong. It's dangerous.

Please don't. I don't want you going up there. I've only just got us all back together. I don't want to lose you.'

For a second, I thought we were going to have that proper row. That good old proper barney that had been brewing on the horizon like a storm. Instead Gwen smiled. Which was actually more dangerous.

'Who said I was going up there alone?'

We went to the pub.

Yeah. I know. When the going gets tough, the tough go out on the lash. But it's more complicated than that... Actually, it's not. Not at all. Gwen just wanted to find somewhere that contained as many people as possible. Foot soldiers for her crusade. A bloody mad crusade, if you ask me, which is why it would help if her willing volunteers were a bit drunk.

The pub was as grim as ever. But very, very open.

But in order to get to the pub... you had to pass the village green. You had to pass Davydd's house.

You had to pass the kids. Standing there, surrounded by a thick field of those dreadful flowers.

They looked like an art installation. If you thought of them like that, it helped. Not as nearly people but as statues that made it somehow manageable. The worst thing was their eyes. They were open, wide open but not looking. You know when someone says of a statue, Its eyes follow you around the room'?

Well, it was exactly the opposite with the Scions.

They weren't watching us. They didn't care.

At the same time it was obvious that they were waiting for instructions. For orders. For something.

Maybe just for someone to make the wrong move.

They weren't alone. A couple of their mothers were sat on a bench. Crying. Mrs Meredith had bought along a thermos flask and sandwiches. Megan Harries went over to them.

There was an odd atmosphere inside the pub. Tense, with that odd sweaty tang to the air - it wasn't that the place was open early; it was that it hadn't shut.

Everyone had just gone there to drink and mutter and speculate. At first to get in out of the cold, to steady the nerves... and now they were hiding.

Someone had even turned on a sports channel that no one was really watching.

I made for the bar. Gwen made for the centre of the room.

'Hey!' she said. Bright smile, police training leaching through. 'Good morning.'

Not much of a reaction.
If we don't look at her,
perhaps she'll sit down and shut the hell up.

The smile got a bit brighter. Bit steelier. 'Where's Davydd?' she asked. A pause. 'Well?'

The sound of a pint glass sliding across a table.

A head looked up. 'Out the back,' rumbled a voice.

'Having a kip.'

'How is he?'

A bit of a snarl, some muttering. A 'How do you think?' But she had their attention. So Gwen seized it. She spoke, a wonderful rallying address. She won them over and she...

Oh, who am I kidding? Sorry. I wasn't listening.

You see...

I was stood at the bar sizing up a packet of prawn cocktail when a hand landed on my shoulder.

'Well, look who it isn't,' cooed Nerys.

She was done up to 11.

'Morning,' I said. 'Not gone to work, then?'

She shook her head. 'Not likely. Staying around to see if I can help in any way.' She paused, and her glossy lips spread out. 'Plus the bus never turned up today.' She reached down to Anwen, slumbering in my papoose and waved a bejewelled finger in front of her.

'Are you OK?' I asked.

She snorted. 'You kidding? I'm bloody glad I never had anything to do with those things. Oh my god...

you should have seen what they did. They're still out there now, aren't they? It makes it dead creepy whenever you nip out for a fag. I'm asking Paddy if we can just smoke in here.' She shuddered. 'I mean, it'd make sense. And it is an emergency.'

I made a non-committal noise. For tome reason there wasn't that much room at the bar. I mean, Nerys was standing ever so close.

'What about you, pet?' she asked. 'You OK? What brings you here?'

'Ah,' I said. 'My wife wants to go see that everything's OK at the Weather Station.'

'Frankenstein's Castle?' Nerys laughed, tossing out her hair and dabbing at the salted innards of a crisps packet with a finger. 'Riiiight.'

'Oh, don't,' I said, feeling awkward and silly.

'What's it like up there?'

'Never been,' she said. 'It's full of science. We all steer clear of it, you know.' She sighed. 'Doesn't interest me at all.' Then she hopped onto a bar stool, her legs swinging against mine. I felt a bit odd, to be frank. She was looking at me and smiling. 'But you do interest me.'

Blimey.

Gwen was still talking. I tried to listen to her, but Nerys was still there. She'd stopped kicking me gently and instead one of her shoes was RUBBING

my leg. I looked back at her and she smiled at me. I was suddenly very conscious of the whole thing. No one had ever played footsie with me while I had a baby on my shoulder before. Mind you, people always say you should try new things.

Sudden barman. Guess I'd closed my eyes for a second. 'What are you having, mate?'

Nerys leaned forward. 'Yes, Rhys, what are you having?'

Er. I wondered about a cheeky pint. It was, after all, a bit of an emergency.

'Go on,' cooed Nerys. 'Be a devil.'

Christ, love, I thought, do you ever turn it down a bit?

'Yeah, pint of Druid's Ruin,' I said. 'Have one yourself, Paddy,' I continued, and then faltered -

I'd not offered to get Nerys a drink. Best not give the wrong impression, eh? So she leaned forward, cleavage straining against her top. Til have a JD