Your Father Sends His Love (25 page)

Don and Gibbs walked through into an antechamber where a poster explaining the Bunker was pasted: its operational needs and its brief history. It explained nothing, really. The Bunker would house the emergency council in the north-west should the bomb drop. It would keep bureaucracy alive. The others joined them. They read the poster in silence. Gibbs moved through to the next room. Don followed him.

Inside, there was a notice warning younger visitors of a danger facing the Bunker. The Bunker had been infiltrated by Soviet spy mice and it was the children's patriotic duty to find each one of them, especially their most cunning leader, Boris the Rat. James picked up a photocopied sheet printed with the names of ten spy mice and took a pencil from a mug with a mushroom cloud on it. He explained the game to Gracie, how to cross off each mouse when she found it.

‘Travesty, isn't it?' Gibbs said. ‘The war as bloody theme park.'

‘Look, a spy mouse!' Gracie said. Just below the sign,
on top of a missile casing, there was a soft toy mouse with painted, radioactive eyes.

‘Maybe the mice we used to see down here were spies,' Don said. ‘Wouldn't that be something?' Gibbs laughed and exited the room. Don followed.

On the stairs the old feeling came back. Leaving the dozing world – Jayne, the house in which he lived, the country around him, even Maggie – and heading into the real one. From distraction to knowledge, from inaction to responsibility. The changes in the smell and the light, the changes in ambient noise and sound of voices and machines, they gave him a kind of swagger, a sense of purpose. He knew the truth. He knew what was really going on.

In shifts Gibbs and Don had checked the lines, fixed faults, ensured all the equipment worked. They saw the whole of the Bunker, each of the rooms. Not everyone got to do that. At changeover they'd drink their tea upstairs and go over the job sheets. Not even their wives knew where they were. At the end of the shift Gibbs would say, ‘And back to the world of dreams.'

Don passed a photograph, large and grainy, of a mushroom cloud, a ‘Duck and Cover' photo strip. Gracie found another spy mouse. It was in the old comms room, peeking out from the cuff of a radiation suit. Don wanted to sit down. The room used to hum with noise:
non-specific, electrical. The chief comms officer had sat at a desk in the centre of the floor space, flanked on his left by Barry and on his right by a younger man whose name Don could not recall. They had been a determined lot; committed, serious. The desks were still there, the phones a mismatch of styles and ages.

‘Remember installing them?' Gibbs said pointing to a series of handsets. ‘It was a bugger, wasn't it?'

‘Three weeks, and only half ever worked properly.'

Gibbs shook his head.

‘See the size of them computers? I remember thinking they were tiny,' he said.

Gracie found another spy mouse under one of the telephones and crossed it off her list. Behind her, an outline of the UK glowed on a board, pin-pricks highlighting the eleven post-bomb administrative areas in the event of fall-out. Gibbs went over to it; put his hand on the rope guard.

‘She's a lovely kid, your Gracie,' he said.

‘Yes, she is,' Don said.

They stood there for a moment, looking at the map. The formations and drills they'd practised, the timings measured and their performance quantified. The Bunker had been closed in '94 and there had been a party. Not quite a party. A few of them and some Scotch and some
wine. A speech from Barry. Words recycled from another war, a different victory. Afterwards Gibbs and Don had sat in the comms room until they were asked to leave.

Don walked the remaining rooms in silence. There were mannequins at some of the stations. One behind the desk in the broadcasting suite, another in the infirmary. They made Don jumpy. As though old colleagues had been frozen and wax-covered. He passed through the dormitories to where the council would meet when the time came. All those years and it didn't look in any way familiar. He remembered meeting Maggie. He remembered hearing about her children for the first time. He remembered when one of their weekends was cancelled because James had broken his arm.

Maggie found him standing by the generator. She put her arm around him.

‘How did you ever cope?' she said.

He kissed her on the top of her head.

‘Come on,' he said. ‘We should catch up with the others.'

They met James, Andrea, Gracie and Gibbs at the foot of the stairs, crowded by a door.

‘Who's coming in?' said Gibbs.

‘Are you serious?' Maggie said reading the warnings written on the door.

Gibbs and Don laughed.

‘Well, I'm not going in there,' she said. ‘It gives me the creeps, the very idea.'

The rest followed Gracie who, realizing there were no spy mice inside, was heading down the corridor holding the sheet of paper, intent on capturing Boris the Rat. The two friends remained by the door.

‘After you,' Gibbs said. Don nodded and pulled the handle.

Inside, the smell was heavy and right; its size, its contents, the small lavatory, a pair of benches, also right. On the wall there was a large red button. They both sat and Don pushed the button. The room filled with static. There was an alarm, one that they both recognized; a female voice they didn't.

‘Rose did this part the best,' Gibbs said. Don nodded.

‘This is not a test,' the voice said. ‘Repeat, this is not a test.'

The bombs were on their way. The voice started a countdown. At the word ‘impact', the recording crumpled and there was a low roil, the first inkling of explosion. The lights flickered on and off and the rumble began. Gibbs looked at him, but Don had his eyes closed. The attack went on. The thick doors, the lavatory, the benches all shaking. Then a respite and just a low whistling. Their jobs would start now. After the blast and everything else.

‘Tasteful, isn't it?' Gibbs said.

After the bunker had been decommissioned, Don had got a job locally. Jayne was over forty. Too late now. Too late for so many things. He missed Maggie and he missed the Bunker. Jayne lost all patience with him. If you'd have asked him then, Don would have said the Bunker had been taken out just at the right time. It would be better to start again than save the world they lived in now.

Jayne left him for someone else and he spent years in itinerant contracts, jobs here and there. He did not go looking for Maggie. He wanted to, but he had promised. Eventually Maggie found him, tracked him down with surprising ease. He was reluctant. There was nothing to salvage. It would just be the two of them, divorced, eating dinner. Yet more time wasted. But then he let her win. Because he still loved her, he let her win.

The room stopped shaking. The recording finished. The experience was over. Gibbs stood up and opened the door. Don stayed where he was. Gibbs nodded and let the door slam shut.

Don looked at the door and then at the red button. He pressed it again.

‘This is not a test,' the voice said. ‘Repeat, this is not a test.'

As the low roil started, the door opened. Maggie sat
down on the bench next to him. They let the door slam and the world end around them. They sat side by side until the world stopped ending. The rumbling stopped and there was silence. Then Maggie pushed the button one more time.

WHAT'S GOING ON OUTSIDE?

Karel sat at the card table peeling his third orange. His hands were large and powerful, his fingers nimble. By the time he'd finished, the orange flesh was clean and perfectly round. He admired his handiwork, then split the orange into segments. He ate them quickly, as though one might be stolen at any moment. When done, he sucked the juice from the fingers of his left hand and with his right removed another orange from the plastic sack at his feet.

‘For the love of God, Karel,' Eugene said. ‘How many oranges can one man eat?'

Karel looked up from his fourth orange, his nail already under the peel. The older man – canted, pocked face, grey-eyed – was stretched out on the right-hand bed, a newspaper just below his eyes.

‘Would you like one?' Karel said. ‘I have plenty.'

‘Speak Russian, Karel!' Eugene said. ‘It's almost midnight. It's much too late in the day for English.'

‘Would you like one?' Karel said in Russian. ‘I have plenty.'

‘You know I can't abide oranges,' Eugene said. ‘You know I can't stand the way you peel your oranges. So just be quiet, okay? Be quiet and eat your fucking oranges.'

The answer was nine: one man – or at least the man who was Karel – could eat nine oranges in one sitting. The last two are not pleasant: too sweet by that point, too sticky on the fingers no matter how many times you wash them. And their room is the furthest away from both bathroom and kitchen. Those last two oranges are something like an ordeal; but Karel always likes to push things. That's what his father used to say. What Eugene says too.

‘Does it not give you a stomach ache?' Eugene asked, setting aside his newspaper and tapping a cigarette against the wall.

‘They're on special offer downstairs,' he said. ‘A whole bag for a pound. And they're good oranges too.'

Karel held out a segment of orange, Eugene pointed to his lit cigarette.

‘They're good for you,' Karel said. ‘Vitamins and things.'

‘Nothing's good for you,' Eugene said. ‘Everything's going to kill you one day. Don't you read the papers? Don't you watch TV?'

‘No one's ever died from eating oranges.'

‘Perhaps no one's eaten as many as you. Maybe you'll be the first man to die of oranges. The first man to eat his body weight in oranges and then drop dead.'

Karel laughed. His shoulders went down and up like he was working the jackhammer. He stopped and went back to his orange.

‘Your father would never have eaten fruit the way you do.'

Karel looked up from peeling. He smiled.

‘No, he'd have eaten the peel as well,' Karel said.

‘Don't you be disrespectful,' Eugene said.

Eugene shook his head and picked up his newspaper. Karel watched him move from the bed to the window. It was a broken sash, three floors up. They had the best room because Eugene had been there longest and had got to choose both his roommate and where he slept. When Karel had first arrived, he'd shared a bedroom with five other men, sleeping in shifts, the smells and noises like a farmyard. Now there was a wardrobe and a dresser, a card table and two single beds. Eugene opened the sash and hung out, smoking his cigarette. He could smell exhaust fumes, sweet pastry being baked. Most of all he could smell Karel's oranges.

‘What's going on outside?' Karel asked.

Their room was above a greengrocer and looked out
onto the main road. The shops were Turkish, Kurdish, Greek; open all hours. There was always something to see, either down at street level or in the flats and bedsits opposite. In the smaller window at one o'clock to them, a man was jigging a small child up and down. He wasn't wearing anything on his top half and was animatedly, though to Eugene mutely, singing as he bounced the child around.

‘There are a few lights on. The man with the baby's there.'

‘The wife?'

‘No. No ladies tonight.'

‘There never are any ladies, are there?'

‘No. They're all such
teases
, aren't they?' Eugene said.

Karel peeled his fifth orange. He admired his handiwork, then split the orange into segments. He ate them distractedly.

‘I'm not sure I can take another night of this,' Eugene said.

‘You say that every night,' Karel said. ‘Every night the same.'

‘Is it any wonder? And stop with the English again. Talk Russian! You sound like a dope in English.'

Karel said nothing in either language. Nothing twice. He ate the sixth orange slowly.

‘So out with it,' Eugene said eventually. ‘You look like a fish. A big stupid fish.'

‘There's nothing to say,' Karel said. ‘Nothing important at least.'

Karel started on the seventh orange. The peel did not come away in a perfect roll. The peel looked ragged, like a label picked from a beer bottle.

‘How long have we lived together? How long have we known each other? You are my son. My blood is not your blood, but you are my son, as close as is possible. Like Joseph to Jesus. I know, Karel. I know that something is on your mind. Your father looked the same way when things were on his mind.'

Karel put down the half-peeled orange and stood. Triangular torso, bullet-headed, smooth pink skin. The woman he did odd jobs for called him Tank. She liked to watch his forearms as he moved gravel from one part of the garden to another, drinking tea with her friends as he worked. She was a good woman. She reminded Karel of his mother.

‘It's nothing, Gen. Nothing really.'

‘Say nothing then. Say nothing for the rest of the night. Let's sit ourselves in silence! You can look like a dopey fish all evening.'

There was half of the orange left. It sat on the plate by its torn peel. He looked up at Eugene and then back down
at the orange. Were he to say something the conversation would last the night. The thought tired him enough to leave the last of the orange.

Eugene stubbed out his cigarette on the outside wall. Below him, almost touched by the fading ash, were two men arguing outside the greengrocer's. One was carrying a large leather Bible. A bus rattled past. A van with a defective exhaust.

‘What's going on outside?' Karel asked. ‘What's the noise?'

‘Two men are arguing,' Eugene said. ‘I don't know the language, but it's an argument.'

‘Anything else?'

‘There are a few lights on. The man with the baby's still there. His wife now too. They're all singing. She has a top on, but he doesn't.'

‘How do they look?' Karel said.