The Testament of Jessie Lamb (2 page)

Sal and I were curious but it didn't touch us. Not until–well, not until the day she heard about her aunty. We were in her bedroom with her clothes scattered across the floor and both of us trying not to listen to her mum's anxious voice on the phone downstairs.

‘Did you see those doctors on the news last night?' Sal asked.

‘I don't think so.'

‘They showed what MDS does to the brain. It kind of makes holes come in your brain. They said women who get it, their brains will look like Swiss cheese.'

‘That's disgusting.'

‘Yeah, they gradually lose bits of their brain, they stop being able to balance, and they forget stuff.'

‘D'you think it hurts?'

‘They didn't say. Some of them die really fast. After only three days of being ill.'

We agreed that knowing it was coming must be the worst part. Who wants to know their brain will turn into Swiss cheese? We sat in silence for a while. Sal had lots of clockwork toys in her room, she used to collect them–and we wound up a nun and a Lisa Simpson and raced them across her desk. The nun won. We entered a letterbox pencil-sharpener and a toy car as well. It's harder with four because you have to wind them up and hold one ready in each hand without it unwinding. I told myself if the nun won again then they would find a cure to MDS. But Lisa fell off the edge of the desk and the nun and the letterbox collided.

‘Maybe we'll never have children,' said Sal.

‘When the youngest people who're alive today get old–'

‘They'll be the last people on earth.' It had been on the news for ages, but it was the first time I could really see it. ‘As we get older, there won't
be
any children.'

‘They'll have to close the schools.'

‘All the things children need–they won't make them any more.'

‘Nappies, baby clothes, pushchairs.'

‘It'll be so weird.'

‘And when we're old, everyone'll be old. There'll be no one going to work.'

‘No shops or bin men or buses.'

‘Nothing. It'll all just grind to a halt.'

Sal turned on the telly. There'd been a riot at some holy place in India. Too many women had tried to go there to pray and someone had panicked, and lots of them were trampled to death. She turned off the sound. ‘There doesn't seem much point in doing our homework, does there? If we're about to be extinct.'

We thought of all the things that would be pointless; university, work, getting married, building, farming, mending the roads.

‘There'd be nothing to do but try to keep ourselves amused until we died,' said Sal. ‘It wouldn't matter what we did. Nobody'd care.'

I started to worry about how there'd be no-one to cremate or bury the last corpses. Then I realized animals would probably eat them. ‘The world will be really peaceful. No more cars or planes or factories–no more pollution. Gradually, plants will take over cities–'

We thought about our houses slowly falling to bits, the doors blowing open, the roofs caving in, birds and animals nesting there.

‘Some other species will dominate,' said Sal, and we began to argue about what it might be. All the animals in zoos etc would have to be let out before the last people died. Which would probably kill off a few of us even sooner. And those animals that could adapt to life in their new territory might take over. There might be wolves again in England, and bears. Tigers might live off untended herds of cows. Tree branches would spread out over roads, and hedges would grow huge and wild, and weeds burst through the tarmac. After a hundred years the world would be one great nature reserve, with all the threatened species breeding again, and great shoals of cod in the sea, eagles nesting in old church spires. It made me think of the garden of Eden, how it was supposed to be so beautiful before Adam and Eve messed things up.

‘But just imagine never holding a baby in your arms.' Sal turned up the TV; that advert for dancing yoghurt pots was on, we always sang along to it in high squeaky voices, so we did.

Then her mum came upstairs in tears and told Sal it was her aunty. I didn't even know her aunty was pregnant. All I could think about was the smell of burning which wafted in when her mum opened the door. A harsh burnt sweet smell that caught in your throat–it was the chocolate cake we'd made which her mum was meant to be keeping an eye on. I said goodbye awkwardly and went downstairs. Their dog Sammy was whining at the back door so I let him in, and I turned off the oven. There wasn't any point in looking, you could tell it would be cinders. I didn't feel anything about her aunty. I simply didn't
care
. I thought, I wonder what will happen next? As if the human race and its fate was nothing at all to do with me. As if I was on a bicycle, free wheeling very fast downhill, in the smooth blackness of night.

At that time Mum and Dad bickered constantly between themselves and when they got a chance they'd snarl at me as well. I suppose they must have been worried about MDS but I don't remember them talking about it much. What I remember are endless petty rows. You'd wake up in the morning and there was this mood right through the house like the smell of gas. They'd manage everything without speaking, politely moving out of each other's way, talking to me with exaggerated friendliness. They'd keep it up, sometimes for days on end, and then stop for practically no reason. Dad'd do something, pour Mum a glass of wine and hand it to her with a little bow, or ask her if she wanted to watch a DVD. And suddenly everything was OK again. Because
they'd
decided. The only night of peace was Tuesdays; Mum had an evening clinic and Dad and I always had tea together.

Tuesday night in the kitchen
.

Dad's got all his ingredients out, in a neat row along the counter, and he's weighing and measuring them onto separate plates. He's got one of those old-fashioned sets of balancing scales with a metal dish on one side and little brass weights that you add in a pile, on the other. Mum gave it him for Christmas and he loves it. The weights are smooth and chunky and fit together in a neat tower. Mum says he cooks like a scientist. He won't cook something if he hasn't got the exactly right ingredients.

He's standing there measuring, with his shoulders hunched forward, he looks a bit like an ape! He's hairy like an ape too, with a furry chest. When Mum used to take me swimming I stared at the strange men with bare chests. He's got broad shoulders and a thick neck but short legs, and when he turns round to smile you can see he's got bright brown eyes and two deep smile creases carved either side of his mouth in a really monkey-ish grin. When he grins at you you can't help yourself, you have to grin back. Except he hasn't grinned for a long time now. Which I suppose is my fault.

I used to do my homework on the kitchen table on Tuesdays and we'd think up perfect crimes that you wouldn't get caught for and make each other laugh. Things like, if your victim is allergic to bee stings, put a drop of honey on his collar and let loose some bees. When they sting his neck it'll swell up and suffocate him before he can get help. Or, if you need to dispose of a corpse, put it in your car and drive to a safari park. Chuck it out for the lions when no-one's looking. They'll eat it up and leave no trace.

There was a Tuesday when Dad properly explained Maternal Death Syndrome to me. The news was saying it was everywhere. Rumours about unaffected tribes deep in the Amazon rainforest or amongst the Inuit of the frozen north, all of them were untrue. It wasn't just the West, or the First World, or cities. There
were
some pregnant women left, but only ones who were far on in their pregnancies; women who must have got pregnant before MDS arrived. Once these women gave birth, it seemed there wouldn't be any more babies.

‘I don't understand,' I said to Dad. ‘Why is it only pregnant women who get it?'

‘Well,' he said, settling down to peel some potatoes. ‘Up till 100 years ago, pregnancy was the most dangerous experience in a woman's life, and the one the highest percentage were likely to die from.'

‘Father of Wisdom,' I said, and rolled my eyes at him. That's what I call him when he goes off on one. But he didn't smile.

‘D'you want to know or don't you?'

‘I want to know.'

‘Right then. There are all sorts of reasons why pregnancy is dangerous–obviously. The baby can come too early or too late; it may not present head first, the placenta may not come away properly, etc. But once you take away all the physical,
mechanical
things that can go wrong–there's something else, which is even more disturbing–because they think it's what these guys have latched on to.'

‘These guys?'

‘The terrorists. Bio-terrorists, who've engineered this virus.'

‘What is it?'

‘Well you know what your immune system is?'

‘Yes, it fights diseases.'

‘Exactly. It knows what
you
are, and it attacks anything that is not
you
. Anything foreign in your system, it attacks, in order to defend you. Now spot the problem. When a woman gets pregnant, what's the problem?'

I sat and puzzled my brain. ‘Is it the baby? Because the baby's a different person?'

‘Nearly. What's the baby made of?'

‘Doh. Blood, bones–'

He shook his head at me. ‘In the very beginning.'

‘An egg.'

‘And?'

‘A sperm.'

‘Thankyou. Which comes from someone else. And for the baby to grow, that sperm needs to survive, and all the cells that grow from the union of the sperm and the egg need to survive. But the woman's immune system should attack it. Because it's a foreigner in her body.'

‘OK.'

‘But it doesn't. In most normal pregnancies, the woman's immune system does not attack the sperm or developing foetus. Her immune system takes a step back, in order to let the baby grow. And while the woman's not being defended against the sperm, she's also not being completely defended against various other nasties that might want to invade her system.'

‘And that's why she gets MDS?'

‘So they think. The blip in her immune system, which allows her to remain pregnant, seems to make her vulnerable to Maternal Death Syndrome. That's when it kicks in. It's a freakish chance–whoever worked it out is either a genius or very lucky.'

‘So when they say it's full-blown–'

‘They mean it's triggered CJD. Prion disease. They've married the AIDS virus with CJD, that's what researchers reckon. So the AIDS gets a hold and makes the woman vulnerable to everything going, and the first thing that's going is CJD. For which we have no cure in sight–never have had, not back since the days of Mad Cow disease.'

‘A scientist must have done it.'

‘Well it hasn't happened by accident.'

‘But
why
?'

‘Power? Religion? Your guess is as good as mine, Jessie.' He'd cut the potatoes into chips and now he lowered them into the pan, and they hissed and fizzed. The smell of hot oil filled the kitchen. ‘Set the table, love, these are nearly done. And let's change the record, shall we?'

I shifted my books off the table.

‘Come on,' he said, ‘how about a perfect crime? You have to use an ostrich feather and a safety pin. I'll give you three minutes.' That's what we used to do. Give each other a clue, or a weapon. We could always make each other laugh. It's like remembering another life. ‘Come along,' he said. ‘My nut-brown maid.'

The next thing that happened was that Sal's aunt in Birmingham died. She was 10 weeks pregnant. Sal's aunt and uncle already had three children. ‘Mum says we might have Tommy, the little one, to live with us,' Sal told me.

‘Is your mum very upset?'

She pulled her face.

I felt clumsy and thick and miserable but I wanted to talk about it. ‘Why do you think this is happening?'

‘Doh.'

‘No, I mean, what's behind it?'

She blew out through her lips. ‘Someone wants the human race extinct.'

‘But
why
?'

‘How should I know?'

‘I've been thinking about it.'

Sal started picking up clothes off her floor and flinging them into a heap in the corner. ‘Go on, wonder-brain.'

‘Maybe they've done it for a reason.'

‘Like?'

‘Well they must hate everyone.'

‘Brilliant.'

‘They must–they must be really angry.'

‘What about?'

‘Anything. Wars. Injustice.'

‘This isn't exactly going to fix anything, is it?'

‘Yes. It'll make all the bad things end.'

‘Why are they targeting women? Of all the people in the world, why women and their babies? If you want to wipe out bad people why not start with politicians–or paedophiles?'