Brother in the Land (14 page)

June gave way to July. Gradually, our life settled into a routine, and a kind of healing process began inside our heads. You could feel it. Minds that had been bruised by crisis after crisis, wound up tight by constant danger, began to unwind. We hoed between the rows of as yet invisible crops whose whereabouts were marked with lengths of twine stretched on sticks. We picked stones, scattered manure from the chickens and Branwell's donkey, and scraped away irradiated topsoil to increase the acreage of our cultivated land. We talked about Maureen's baby, calling it ‘Ours'. ‘Our first child,' we said. ‘The first of many.'

Rations were low. No more new people were coming in, and there was a slow but horribly steady toll of fresh fatalities from the ravages of radiation, but still the food we had would have to last some months yet, till the first crops came in. We were hungry most of the time but we learned not to notice it.

The huts were divided into three sorts – single women's, single men's and married quarters. Some of the kids had no parent, so they were accommodated in a hut of their own with Kate and another woman to look after them. As things began to get sorted out, quite a few couples went and got married in the little chapel. They weren't really married of course, but old Branwell said some words over them and people sang and it
was the best that could be managed. One day, walking in from the field at sunset, I spoke to Kim.

‘Listen, Kim. You know how I feel about you, and you said you liked me too. Why don't we get married? We could take Ben out of the kids' hut and be a sort of family. What d'you think, huh?'

She was silent for a while. We walked towards the compound with our hoes on our shoulders; bone-weary in our grubby clothes. All round us, others were walking, too, singly and in groups, talking quietly or thinking about the meal they'd soon be eating. When we passed inside the wire she turned aside and led me down behind the row of women's huts. She hooked her fingers through the wire and stood looking back towards the field. After a moment I saw that she was crying.

‘Hey,' I whispered. ‘What's up? What did I say?' She shook her head without looking at me. ‘Nothing. I'm scared that's all.'

‘Scared? What for? I didn't mean to scare you. What did I do, for Pete's sake?' She shook her head again.

‘You didn't do anything. It's Maureen. The baby. I'm scared for the baby.'

I laid a grubby hand on her arm. ‘Maureen'll be fine, Kim. Doctor Renton's watching her. Is there something wrong with Maureen or something?'

She pressed her forehead into the mesh. ‘No. Nothing that shows.'

‘Well, then!' I moved, laying my arm across her shoulders. She shook it off, twisting round to face me. Her cheeks were smudged with a mixture of tears and dust and her voice was shaky.

‘Did you ever hear of Hiroshima, Danny?'

‘Of course I did. Who didn't?'

‘Did you read about it? About what happened to the people?'

‘Yes. It was bad, Kim, really bad, but it wasn't a patch on what's happened to the whole world now. Why are we talking about Hiroshima, Kim?'

She turned back to the fence to hide her face from me. ‘I'm not talking about what happened right away. I mean what happened after. I'm talking about the babies.'

‘The – oh, Kim.' The babies. The babies of Hiroshima. I'd read about them all right. Babies with no legs, no arms, no stomach. Babies with two heads. Forty years after, they were still being born like that. I tried to take hold of her but she twisted away.

‘No! I don't want that. It doesn't help. I want you to tell me it's not going to be like that with Maureen's baby. I want you to say it's going to be all right. The first of many. That's what I want, Danny.'

I stood with my arms dangling, looking at her. I didn't know what to say. I didn't know why it hadn't occurred to me; the possibility that the kid might be born deformed or something because of the radiation Maureen had taken in. Maybe it had occurred to me, only I'd buried it, refused to think about it. Kim regarded me accusingly over her shoulder.

‘Well? Can you do that, Danny? Can you say it's going to be all right?'

‘Can you tell me why you haven't been thinking about it all these weeks as I have? Why you're pestering me to marry you so we can make a monster too?'

I looked at the ground. I didn't have an answer that made any sense. ‘I've been thinking about it,' I said. ‘Only I've kept it underneath, y'know? We have to hope, Kim. There were normal babies in Hiroshima too.'

‘Not many.' She turned away and her voice was flat. ‘Not even with the best medical attention in the world. And like you said, that was nothing, one tiny bomb. So you go on hoping if you can, only don't expect me to push it to the back of my mind and rush off and marry you and live happily ever after.'

I don't know what I'd have said to that, if Ben hadn't come running to say why weren't we getting washed ready for dinner. He stared at Kim like kids do when they see a grown-up cry. I put my hand on the back of his shaggy head and steered him back the way he'd come. He kept trying to look back. ‘What's up with her?' he demanded.

I shook my head. ‘Nothing, Ben. She's a bit fed up, that's all.'

He was silent for a moment, then he said, ‘D'you think she'd like to see this? Tim and me found it under the school.' He fished in his pocket and pulled out a crumpled fistful of rag. I kept walking and he opened it up, trotting at my side, and held it out towards me. ‘Look.'

I looked. In his dirty palm, half-moribund, a butterfly lay. At first I took it for two butterflies but then I looked again, cried out with revulsion and knocked it from his hand. It spiralled to the ground, fluttering ineffectually its seven misshapen wings.

In August it was hot. The bombs had done something to the atmosphere, so that the sun came up in a sort of fiery haze and burned behind it all day like a big fuzzy ball. It messed up the radio too. The soldiers listening out were half-deafened all the time by fantastic crackling noises. Not that there was anything else to hear. They'd swept the wavebands, tuning in on every possible frequency, and there was nobody there. The feeling grew that we were alone in the world.

There were no birds. It was a long time before I noticed this and when I did, I couldn't remember whether I'd seen any since the nukes. Maybe they'd all been wiped out the day it happened, or perhaps they'd just gradually faded away. Anyway, there were none now.

Another thing. You know how in August you could look across a valley and all the other side was greens, different greens, with a square of yellow here and there where corn grew, or oilseed rape? Maybe you don't know. Maybe it never came back. Well, that had gone too. Looking across the valley where Skipley lay, it was like looking at some place in North Africa or somewhere. All reds and browns and yellows, and clumps of black where dead trees were. I suppose that ought to have warned us, but it didn't. We were all so busy looking after our first crop, we didn't notice that nothing much was growing any more.

We got these terrific electrical storms, and the rain made our seeds germinate so that the dark, wet soil was crossed with rows of fresh green shoots. We took away the twine and worked like mad, wielding our hoes to chop down the weeds that came thrusting up between the rows. The little stone effigy by the farmhouse door had got into our heads and we were blinded by our own optimism. The Green Man. Life out of death. Where there's food there's hope.

As the little plants grew bigger it became apparent even to us that they weren't the proper shape. Most of us were town people, but even a townsman knows what the top of a turnip looks like. These were coming up sort of clumpy and not opening out like they should. We had canes with strings for the beans to climb, but they didn't. They rose about four inches and fell over to twist slowly along the ground like sick brown worms. There should have been flowers on them, but none appeared.

We carried on desperately, telling ourselves it was just the tops. Underneath, the turnips and swedes and potatoes would be fine. No beans maybe, and no cabbages, but plenty of potatoes. In Ireland, they used to live on potatoes.

Then one morning, when we'd been at work maybe an hour, Branwell came out with Rhodes and Captain Laycock and Doctor Renton. They went slowly up and down the rows, plucking the leaves and rolling them between their fingers, all the time conversing in low tones. Everybody pretended to be working hard, but all eyes were on the three men as they made their grim inspection. Perhaps we clung to some forlorn hope that things were not as bad as they appeared. If so, it was quickly dashed. Branwell stooped, grabbed a handful of leaves and uprooted a swede.

It wasn't a swede at all. On the end of the stalks dangled a grey, shapeless lump about the size of a cricket ball. The old man flung it from him with a muffled exclamation and pulled another, holding it up so that the others could see the mass of warty pulp.

They began pulling up potato plants and turnips, too. Everything was the same. The turnips were smaller than the
swedes, and just as ugly. The potato plants had nothing on them at all, only a tangled mass of sick roots with clumps of clay stuck to them. Finally Branwell straightened up and looked at us all. We'd abandoned the pretence of working and stood, leaning on our hoes while the hearts sank within us. It was a big field, and he had to shout to make us all hear.

‘I'm sorry,' he said, ‘but as you can see, our vegetables are not developing properly. Mr Rhodes and myself have suspected as much for several days, and I believe most of you have too. It may be that we didn't remove the top soil thoroughly enough, or perhaps the plants were affected by radiation which fell with the rain. In either case, there's no point I'm afraid in going on wasting our time and energy on them. I would ask you not to be too despondent, however. We have food enough for several months if we are careful, and Mr Rhodes has some ideas about re-supplying the settlement in preparation for winter.' He broke off, spoke briefly to his three companions, and then added, ‘If you will return to your quarters now, we will meet together in about an hour to discuss the situation. Thank you.'

We trooped back to the compound. Hardly anybody spoke. We threw down our useless implements in a pile by the gate and fanned out, each heading for his own hut. The kids came out of school with their teacher, to find out why we were back so soon. Somebody told Kate, and she told the kids it was nothing and ushered them back inside. Ben looked back at me as he went, and I could tell he knew it was something bad.

We packed the chapel for the meeting, and a lot of us had to listen from outside. Few of us had any suggestions as to how we might cope with the new situation. Branwell said the rations would have to be reduced still further, except for the sick. When he said except for the sick, he got a sharp look from Rhodes which he didn't see. Rhodes' idea was the sort of thing you'd expect. He proposed forming raiding parties, to go out and look for supplies, ‘wherever they may be found.' He meant, even if we had to kill people to get them. I could see from Branwell's face that he was heartbroken, but then we all were. Rhodes told us he'd be asking for volunteers starting
tomorrow, and Doctor Renton chipped in to say he thought the raiding parties were a good idea anyway, because we were getting low on medical supplies and you can't grow those in a field. If it was an attempt at humour it fell flat.

We dispersed. Most of us went and lay down on our beds. We'd known really I suppose, but now that it was official, the weight of it bore down on us and filled us with despair. After all the horrors of the past year, things had seemed to be improving at last. Now, it looked as though we were pretty nearly back to square one. We'd have to start going out again, scratting among the desolation for something to eat. Looking over our shoulders for Goths and Purples. Wandering into areas of high radiation without knowing it.

We moped, warded off the kids' questions when school finished for the day, and straggled up to the refectory for our frugal meal. It was a glum affair. I'd just sat down with Ben when Kim came in, looking wild. She looked about till she spotted me and started towards my table with something in her hand. As she made her way along the narrow, crowded aisles I saw that she carried a misshapen swede. She stopped at the end of the table and leaned across, dangling the thing in front of my face. Her eyes burned with a febrile light.

‘See this, Danny Lodge?' The hand that held it quivered. The whole room had stopped eating and was looking at her. ‘D'you know what this is, eh? Well I'll tell you. It's a Swede, but it's not your ordinary, everyday swede. Oh, no. This is a Hiroshima swede, Danny-boy, and we also do Hiroshima turnips, Hiroshima beans, Hiroshima spuds and Hiroshima rotten cabbage. Oh yes, and I nearly forgot. Hiroshima babies. We can do you a nice Hiroshima baby if you like.' She stepped back, flashed a look about the room and screamed, ‘The first of many!' Then she flung the swede from her, turned, and ran weeping from the room.