Not As We Know It (5 page)

Granddad was pleased I'd gone out with Tibs. He worried about us being cooped up too much. He had argued with Mum and Dad when they took us out of school. But as Ned grew weaker, so did Granddad's arguments. Now he wanted my brother
in
as much as our parents did. He still wanted me
out,
though.

Granddad and I had cheese on toast for lunch. Granddad ate his with a raw onion. I had mine with tomato. Then we played Risk.

Granddad says you can learn a lot of history and geography from Risk: The World Conquest Game. You have a map of the world split into territories, not all real countries, then you have your own little army and have to conquer the world.

In Granddad's version, you can't conquer a territory unless you can answer a question about it. If you want to conquer Western Australia you might need to know that Willem Janszoon was the first European to see its coastline. Or that Australia was called New Holland when it was first discovered. If you want to conquer the Urals, you'd need to know that their highest point is Mount Narodnaya or, an easier one, that they form the border between Europe and Asia. If you want Argentina, you'd need to know why we had just been at war over the Falkland Islands, that British settlers had landed there in 1690 or that the Falklands had been under British rule for 150 years.

Risk is a long game. Usually no one wins. Granddad says that's like real war, another important lesson.

I thought I had the upper hand when Ned and my parents got home. I had secured South and North America, and I had begun an invasion across Africa but had to stop when I couldn't tell Granddad how many men had defended Rourke's Drift against four thousand Zulu warriors. One hundred and fifty, he told me. We shared Europe and Asia. Granddad only had full control of Australia, the smallest of the continents.

“Nice work,” Ned said, looking over my shoulder at the board.

Ned was no good at Risk. He often said things like, “Why do I need to know that the official languages of Canada are English and French? I'm never gonna go there.” He never made defenses either. Granddad called him “Kamikaze Ned.”

Kamikaze is a kind of suicide attack. During World War II, Japanese pilots would fly explosive laden planes into Allied ships. That's where the word comes from.

And that's how Ned played. He risked everything. That was the name of the game, Risk, but it wasn't a tactic that paid off.

Risk was Ned's tactic for life too—adventures far from home, adopting strange creatures, boldly going where I feared to go—and he seemed to enjoy it as much as he enjoyed sending his little plastic troops on a suicidal attack.

Mum hadn't come into the kitchen. She was crying in the hallway. Dad was pretending to make tea but I could tell he was listening to Mum too.

“How was it?” I said to Dad.

He shook his head, which either meant “not good” or “don't ask” or a combination of both. Mum was still crying and Granddad was listening now.

“Boys, can you go out for a minute? Anything you can do outside?” Dad said.

Maybe risk wasn't a tactic that paid off in life either. We'd brought risk home from the beach. We kept it locked up in our garage. Risk was worth it if it led to that miracle. But one thing was clear: a miracle had not arrived.

The hospital appointments were never good. What Ned had, people don't get better from. They take pills and medicines which sometimes make the symptoms, like his cough, better or sometimes don't. But the people never get better. They only get worse.

Before they stopped taking me along on appointments, I remember a doctor saying some people beat the odds. Some people with Ned's condition live a long time. But the doctors didn't think my brother was going to be one of them.

Outside, I asked Ned, “How was it?”

He pulled a face. “You know,” he said, shrugging at me like I'd shrugged at Tibs. Then he asked, “How's Leonard?”

My brother was cross that I hadn't been to see
our little fishy friend.

“He'll be lonely,” Ned said. “And starving.”

I didn't tell Ned about my fear of Leonard. My brother didn't understand fear. I just shrugged back; Leonard's hunger held a small place in my mind compared to Ned's hospital appointment.

We couldn't go back inside to the freezer yet.

“Mussels?” I suggested.

“Yes!” Ned said.

I picked up my bike, while Ned bent over and coughed. “You stay here.” I promised to be back in twenty minutes with some mussels. They're easy to find if you know where to look. I pedaled furiously and thought about Ned's cough and Mum's tears and the shake of Dad's head.

The first time they'd left me at home, instead of taking me along to the hospital, I'd muttered, “That's so unfair.”

Mum had gasped.

Dad had got pretty angry, pretty quickly. “Jamie,” he'd said. “Don't you ever talk about what's fair and what's not.”

But I knew it was all unfair. It was unfair for all of us.

I couldn't ask anyone what they'd said at the hospital. It was unfair that I was the only one not to know. But I couldn't say that either.

Often in
Star Trek,
when the crew encounter alien life, there are some side effects: the whole crew lose their minds and start prancing around on some distant planet; someone gets psychic powers; Sulu, the ship's pilot, thinks he's a pirate. That kind of thing. If they met someone like our Leonard, the other Leonard—the
Enterprise
's doctor—would want to be sure he wasn't poisonous to them or they weren't poisonous to him.

We had no idea what effect our Leonard would have on us. But like Captain Kirk, Ned had no caution.

When I got back from the beach, I had a pocket full of gray-black mussels. I pushed open the squeaking door and heard the same splash from the morning. Ned was back where he had been, perched on the edge of the tub.

“Come in,” he whispered.

“Is he safe?” I whispered back.

“Of course he is.”

I still went slowly, cautiously, and stopped a few steps back. When my eyes had adjusted to the gloom, I could see him. Beneath the surface. Peering up at us. His eyes were huge—big globes, goggling out of his head.

“Did you get the mussels?”

I fished a few from my pocket and held them out. Ned took them and dropped them into the tub away from the spot where bubbles were rising from Leonard's gills.

The merman's left arm shot out and grabbed one. He put it straight in his mouth. I could see big, sharp teeth like the wolffish. He crunched through the shell and it was gone.

“More?” Ned said. “I knew he'd love mussels.”

I handed them over, three at a time. Leonard ate them all in the same way. His left hand grabbed; his jaws crushed.

“I think he's hurt.” My brother pointed at the fish-man's right arm. It hadn't moved and hung at his side.

“Yeah, you're right. Looks like Dad's did,” I said.

Ned nodded.

Dad got hurt at work a lot. Granddad said the injuries were the only thing that made working at a quarry like being a seaman. Dad had broken some bones, torn muscles and cut his head open. Once, he came home with a dislocated shoulder. “It'll just pop back in,” he'd said. It didn't. He lay around for a day and a night, wincing and drinking tea until Mum made him go to the doctor.

Leonard's shoulder looked the same, floppy and dead, like one of the eels Granddad hung in his shed to smoke.

Leonard had finished his meal. He stared at us, like we stared at him. No one spoke. After several minutes, the merman bobbed to the surface. His legs were bent like a frog's, ready to spring.

I spoke in the slightest whisper. I told Ned the story of Atargatis, the first mermaid.

“Her job was to protect her people?” Ned said.

I nodded, still staring down at Leonard.

“Like Doctor Who?”

I nodded again. “I thought, Ned, maybe he's here for you?”

Ned frowned at this, frowned and chewed his lip. He opened his mouth to reply but a cough took him instead. He tried to quiet it and spluttered through his hands.

Leonard did not have eyebrows. He couldn't frown, but his forehead and the spiked frills across his skull pulled downwards and his lips tightened when he heard that coughing. He moved toward Ned, quick as a fish and rose out of the water, kicking upwards. He rested a hand on Ned's knee and pressed his head to my brother's chest.

“Oh, rabbits,” Ned said.

“See? He knows about you. Maybe he will…” I couldn't say it.

We stayed completely still till we heard Mum calling, “Boys!”

Another splash and Leonard was gone back below the surface. Ned and I scrambled to our feet and out of the garage.

“Dinner,” Mum said from the back door.

We nodded and said we'd be right in.

I slid the latch across as Ned said, “We'll fix him up. Make him better. But, Jamie, I don't think—”

“Boys!” Mum called again.

I spent dinner thinking about how to ask Dad about his dislocated shoulder. I didn't need to bother.

When Mum slid bowls of Ned's favorite dessert, apple crumble, in front of us, my brother said, “How did the doctor fix your dislocated shoulder, Dad?”

“What?” Dad said.

“You're such a funny boy, Neddy,” Granddad chuckled.

Dad told us the doctor just kind of rolled it round and round. He showed us by twirling his arm. He knocked his tea over and Mum called him a lummox.

“Then it just popped back in. Very painful,” Dad said. “They gave me lots of painkillers and strapped it up after. Still a bit gammy.”

“Painkillers and strapped it up,” Ned repeated.

Mum glared at us. “You boys won't be doing anything that might dislocate a shoulder, though. I'm not having you go anywhere for a while, not till…” After she said “till,” Mum put her hand to her mouth like she was trying to force the words back in. Then she started crying again.

“Come on, love,” Dad said.

“Let's finish our game of Risk,” Granddad said. “I've moved the board.”

In the front room, Ned joined Granddad's team. I continued my assault on Africa. Ned's attacks were as suicidal as usual. He punctured my defense in North America by crossing the Bering Strait from Russia and knowing that Alaska is the biggest state in the USA. An easy question. He spread himself too thin, though. After I'd conquered Africa—
Nelson Mandela was imprisoned on Robben Island
—I smashed back through and took Asia in three goes—
Japan surrendered at the end of World War II after two cities were destroyed by atomic bombs: Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

We all agreed I'd won.

Mum hadn't stopped crying.

Later, when we were meant to be sleeping, we listened to Leonard singing the song of the sea, of waves and wind and wild currents. We listened to Leonard singing and Mum and Dad talking. If they could hear anything but themselves, their fears and worries, they'd have heard him too. They'd have heard him but not known what could make that wild whistling call.

“What are we gonna do?” Mum said.

Dad didn't answer. We'd never seen Dad cry but I thought I heard a whimper then.

There was a whimper and a sob and the whistling song of our merman.

We listened some more and then, “Jamie,” Ned said, “I think you're right. I think he's here for a reason.”

Of course, I'd been thinking the same, thinking it wasn't chance that led us to that patch of seaweed. But hope is a fragile thing and my hope was sinking fast. So I just said, “Maybe. Like in the stories. Like Atargatis. Like the Japanese captain.”

There was silence for a moment. No tears from downstairs. Then Ned said, “But he didn't get better, did he—the Japanese captain?”

I didn't want to think about this. Instead, I said, “We can't keep him in the shed forever.”

“He can share the bottom bunk with you.” My brother laughed.

We both laughed, just a brief
ha.

“I don't want to let him go,” Ned said quietly, while I thought the same.