White and Other Tales of Ruin (46 page)

Gemma laughed childishly and said: “Tibia, fibula, tarsus, metatarsals, phalanges.”

Early that evening they saw the first signs for Edinburgh. The radio had said no more.

Uncle Peter was more than eccentric, he was plain insane … and he wanted people to recognise his insanity. His whole estate was floodlit against the night, revealing all of what he had done. Some of it, Doug thought, should have stayed well hidden.

As they cruised along his long, winding driveway, the first signs of this madness presented themselves. Every tree bordering the road had had its lower branches lopped off, the wounds daubed with black tar to seal them, the dead timber disposed of out of sight. Nailed to the naked trunks were animal corpses, a species for each tree: a squirrel on a sycamore, a sparrow on an elm, a deer on an oak. It was as if Uncle Peter were a game hunter, but he had run out of room for trophies inside his house.

And the house … this was fairly unusual as well.

“
Holy shit,” Doug muttered under his breath as they rounded the final bend in the drive. It was a huge old monolith, stonework sills crumbling with age, windows distorted out of shape by the deadly subsidence plaguing the property and promising to drag it, eventually, back into the stony ground. From plinth to eaves the house looked quite normal, if dishevelled.

Above that, the gargoyles took over.

They were all huge, fashioned from plastic and fibreglass instead of stone, and more gruesome because of that. Garish colours and unsettling designs shouted across at them as they coasted to a halt. Bloody teeth, split throats, dragon-eyes, sabre toothed monstrosities that would surely be more than able to fulfil their duties … if, indeed, these things had the same employ as their more traditional greystone cousins. Stark artificial light gave them an added sense of the grotesque. They looked like a kid’s book made real.

“
Mad as a hatter,” Doug said. “Uncle Peter has gone AWOL I think, Lucy.”

“
He always was a bit offbeat,” she whispered, aghast.

“
Wow,” was all Gemma could say. “Wow.”

The car stank. All three of them had urinated — Doug had refused to stop, even when Lucy-Anne had begged him and cried and cursed as she tried to miss her seat as she pissed — and they had not opened the windows for eleven hours. The fuel gauge had been kissing red for fifty miles, and for the last twenty Doug had been silently blessing Volkswagen’s caution. The food they had managed to bring with them had gone bad in the heat, a pint of milk had spilled, the oxygen cylinders had run out hundreds of miles back … the engine was making a sickly grinding noise … basically, they were on their last legs.

The car rattled and sighed as he turned off the ignition. He was certain it would never start again, not without a great deal of pampering and cajoling. He was equally certain that he would never need to do either.

They sat staring at the house. Doug was expecting mad Uncle Peter to come running out at any moment, a shotgun in one hand and a bottle of Scotch in the other, pumping a hail of lead at the car as he toasted his own questionable health. But the door remained closed, all was calm. Several crows flitted to and fro across the roof, confused by the light, avoiding the gargoyles wherever they could.

“
Crows,” Gemma said. “Family Corvidae. For instance, Corvus corax, Corvus corcone, Corvus frugilegus, Corvus splendens and the magpie, Pica pica. Chiefly insectivorous, in winter it will become omnivorous. Earthworms and grubs. And seeds. It eats … it eats grubs and seeds …” She drifted off, leaning between the front seats, staring through the windscreen at the frolicking birds on the roof of the house.

“
Where …?” Doug said. “Honey? Where did you learns stuff like that? They teach you that at school?”

Gemma turned to him, glaring blankly. Her mouth hung slightly open and a string of drool was threatening to spill out. “Huh?”

“
Honey, what’s wrong?”
Not now
, he thought.
Don’t let her be ill now, not with so little time left …

“
Dad, I’m so thirsty,” she said. Her voice was weak, diluted. Not as strong as it had been moments before. Not as definite.

“
Gemma, how do you know all that about crows — ?”

“
Leave her, Doug,” Lucy-Anne said. “Let’s just get her in, can we? For God’s sake? We need a rest.”

Doug nodded, smoothed Gemma’s hair behind her ears, tried to stretch his legs. He could hear the concern in Lucy-Anne’s voice, and the doubt, and the fact that she was as unsettled as he. Gemma had never been very good at school … had never taken much of an interest in anything …. had been on the verge of being sent to a special school for slow learners.

Corvus corax, Corvus corcone, Corvus frugilegus … Christ, where the hell did she get that from?

“
Ahhhh,” a voice boomed, and Doug’s door was snatched open. He jerked back, gasping in relief at the fresh air gushing in, wondering at the same instant what he was inhaling, whether the nanos were here already, inside him now, starting work on his lungs so that the next breath he drew and let out would mist red in front of him.

“
Uncle Peter?” Lucy-Anne said.

“
Thought I might see some of my folk over the next day or two,” the voice said. Then a man leaned down next to the car to give the voice a face. A wild face indeed, with unruly tufts of hair and cheeks veined with evidence of years of alcohol abuse. His eyes though, they were different. Mad, but intelligent with it.

“
Sorry to say,” Uncle Peter said, “there’s nothing I can do for any of us. But still. It will be nice to have company when the time comes.”

Doug, his wife and daughter heaved themselves from the car, all of them patiently helped by Lucy-Anne’s Uncle Peter. He held them when their legs bowed, their muscles cramped, and he wiped tears from Gemma’s face when she cried. When Lucy-Anne went to him he hugged her close and closed his eyes. Doug felt a brief but intense moment of jealousy, unreasonable yet unavoidable, and he gathered Gemma into his arms as if to ward off his uncertainty.

“
Amazing house,” he said, staring up at the grotesque decoration three stories up.

“
Made them myself,” Peter said. “I must be a fucking fruitcake!”

Laughing, they left the mad night behind and went inside.

“
London went hours ago,” Peter said. “So it said on the TV.” He was peeling potatoes while Doug diced some vegetables. Lucy-Anne and Gemma were washing and changing in one of the upstairs bedrooms. None of them felt like sleeping. “Haven’t been there in a decade. Now all I want to do is to go to Trafalgar Square and feed the pigeons.”

“
My father lives in London,” Doug said. He took his time with each carrot he slit, relishing the hard, crunchy sound. It was a solid sound. Firm. Not too far south of here, solid and firm were words that no longer held meaning.

“
Well,” said Peter, but he did not continue.

They worked in silence for a while, Doug thinking around the subject of death, Peter perhaps doing the same. Everything Doug did now was tainted with the promise of their own demise: this food would not be fully digested when the time came; he may never sleep again, it was a waste of time … so no more dreams. Gemma would not grow up to go to university, marry, bear her own children …

“
It’s just so unfair!” he shouted, throwing the knife at the flagstone floor. He regretted it instantly, felt a cool hand of shame tickle at his scalp. He had not seen this man for ten years, and here he was trying his best to destroy his kitchen.

And there’s another irony, he thought.
In days … hours … this kitchen won’t be here.

Peter glanced at him but said nothing. He continued peeling potatoes.

Doug wondered whether the old nutcase was as far gone as he led to believe. “Why all the lights? And the animals on the trees? And the gargoyles?”

Peter shook his hands dry and transferred the vegetables into a huge pan of boiling water. “In reverse order: the gargoyles to keep people away from the house; the animals on the trees to keep trespassers from my land; the lights so that people can see what I’ve done. It took a long time. Why have it all hidden half the time?”

Doug smiled at the simple logic of it. “But why keep people from the house?”

The old man shrugged. “Don’t like people, mostly.”

There was a clatter of feet from the hallway and Gemma and Lucy-Anne hurried in. They both had wet hair, loose-fitting clothes that Peter had found in some mysteriously well-appointed wardrobe and rosy complexions that made Doug’s heart ache.

“
Your turn,” Peter said.

“
Huh?”

“
Shower. Change. Forgive my bluntness, but you smell.”

“
Daddy smells, Daddy smells!”

He relented, and after giving his wife and daughter a kiss — a hard hug for Gemma, a long, lingering kiss for Lucy-Anne — he made his way up the curving staircase to their bedrooms.

There were towels on the bed, a basket of fruit on the dressing table, a bottle of red wine uncorked and breathing beside the bed, two glasses, and a door between theirs and Gemma’s bedrooms. Thought I might see some of my folk over the next day or two, the mad old fool had said. And though he had claimed to hate people, Doug could see that this was what Peter had wanted more than anything else.

After a hearty meal of steak, fried potatoes, vegetables and great, thick chunks of garlic butter-soaked bread, the four of them made their way into Peter’s living room and sat down with a drink. Gemma went to sleep almost immediately, nestled against Peter’s arm, and the three adults — though tired — sat talking until the sun set fire to the day outside.

There was a strange atmosphere between them, a feeling that they had known each other forever and that there was not a chasm of ten years between this and their last meeting. Lucy-Anne and Peter seemed especially comfortable, finding it unnecessary to resort to reliving old times or talking about absent — or dead — family members to get by. Instead their talk was of Gemma, what she had done in her short life to date, what she wanted to do. Her prospects.

And for a while, Doug was happy to let this go. He half-closed his eyes, enjoying the sense of the brandy sweeping through his veins and setting his stiff muscles afire, listening to Peter and Lucy-Anne’s tempered voices. He found solace in their tone if not their words. He soon tried to tune out what they were saying — because none of it held true meaning any more — and enjoy instead the peace their voices conveyed, the sheer pleasantness of this unreal scene of family conviviality.

But then Gemma stirred and began to mutter in her sleep.

“
Never done that before …” Lucy-Anne said idly. And she said no more.

None of them did. There was nothing to do but listen to what the little girl was saying.

“
First birds were in the Jurassic period, two hundred and thirteen million years ago,” she mumbled into Peter’s side.

The old man stared down at her wide-eyed, but he did not move. Moving may have disturbed her.

“
First mammals and dinosaurs in the Triassic two hundred and forty-eight million years ago, but the dinosaurs reached their peak in the Cretaceous, one hundred and forty-four million years back. First land plants in Silurian times, four hundred and thirty-eight million years ago.” She struggled slightly then, frowning, as if searching for something hidden behind whatever she had been saying. “First humans. Couple of million years ago. Pleistocene epoch.”

She sat up and opened her eyes. “Blink of an eye.”

“
Gemma?” Doug whispered, but then she began to cry.

“
Bright girl you’ve got here, folks.”

“
Gemma? Honey?”

Gemma’s face crumpled as sleep left her behind. Tears formed in her eyes, her nose wrinkled. “Dad,” she said. “Mum …” Then the tears came in earnest and Doug darted across the room, lifted his daughter from Peter’s side, hugged her close to him.

“
Gemma, what’s wrong babe?” Lucy-Anne said. Her voice betrayed none of Doug’s concern or confusion. Hadn’t she heard what Gemma was saying? Hadn’t it registered?

“
Got a headache,” she sniffled into Doug’s shoulder. “And I need to pee.”

“
Here.” Lucy-Anne took Gemma and carried her from the room, and seconds later the two men heard her footsteps on the bare timber risers.

Doug was breathing heavily. Something about the last minute had scared him badly, some facet of Gemma’s sleep-talking sat all wrong with what was happening, what they were going through.

“
Well, I bought her a dinosaur book,” he said. “All kids like dinosaurs, but I’m sure … well, that was pretty detailed.”

“
Like I said, bright girl.”

“
We’re all going to die, aren’t we?” Doug said. “You, me, Lucy-Anne … Gemma.”

“
Of course,” Peter nodded. “Nothing we can do about it. But we have some time, don’t know how much but there’s some. How about we make it the best we can?” He smiled and poured Doug another drink. “Here. Been saving this for a special day.”

“
End of the world?”

The old man surprised him by laughing out loud. “The end of the world. Hell yes, why not? Might as well enjoy it before those damn little robots get their grubby mitts on it.”