In daylight, from the street, London doesn’t look much different. You’d think after a year away there would be some kind of visual change to the city, a sign that I’ve been gone for longer than a few days, but there isn’t. A few more weeds growing from the pavement. Remains dried out, ragged clothes flapping in the breeze. Every now and then I pass a building, or a whole block that has been gutted by fire. I’m deliberately avoiding the west of the city, driving around Waterloo and winding my way south.
It’s the twenty-eighth of December, a Sunday, and I’ve spent every waking moment of the last 3 days clear and sober, trying to find the source of the fireworks from Christmas Day. They only lasted for a few minutes, and the only direction I could get on them was somewhere roughly around the south east of the city. Maybe South Bank, Waterloo, London Bridge. Maybe further, towards Bermondsey, into Southwark. Definitely not further east than that.
I’ve got an A-Z, and have drawn a search grid over it, following main roads east to west, north to south. I drive slowly, taking my time to examine every window, door and car for signs of life. The Land Rover died on Boxing Day, and my latest vehicle is a large black taxi cab which was parked in the drive of a house about twenty feet from where the Land Rover came to a halt. Providence was clearly smiling upon me, as the front door of the house was open, a set of remains crumpled just inside it, keys on a shelf a few feet past that. In and out, and then back on the road. It’s a solid vehicle for the task – easy to drive and with a grumbling diesel engine that you can hear from miles away. I give a good blast on the horn every couple of blocks, but it’s not needed. Apart from the noise of the taxi, London is utterly silent.
Most of the day passes in this pattern. Drive. Horn. Wait. Drive. The sun is just touching the horizon when I find my first clue.
Lying in the middle of the road is the burnt-out shell of a firework, red plastic nose blunted by the force of impact with the ground. The cardboard tube has burst open, and the wooden pole upon which the firework is mounted has split in half. Nonetheless it’s a sign that I’m on the right track. Unfortunately for me I’m in a jungle of council estates south of the river – concrete and brick monstrosities that could take weeks to search. I pick the tallest building that I can see and head for the roof.
Luck might truly be on my side. The doors to this concrete tower are unlocked, and a chill breeze stirs through it. Upstairs I can hear the soft banging of something being pulled back and forth in the wind. I take the stairs two at a time, bounding up all six stories until I reach a narrow set of steps that lead up to the roof. The door at the top is ajar, swinging on its hinges, bouncing off a brick that’s jamming it open.
Outside, the roof is an empty plateau of grey concrete, except for a small collection of beer bottles. I don;t need to look closer. The bottles still have labels on them, clearly printed and neither weathered nor faded. Somebody has been here in the last few days. My mysterious provider of fireworks. I head back down to the taxi and settle in for a night of waiting.
A day and a night pass, and I’ve decamped from the taxi into one of the two ground-floor flats. The first door I kicked down revealed a nightmare of seventies decor and a set of remains wrapped up in a cotton night gown, bed sheets stained and half-eaten. I pulled the front door closed as much as possible and broke my way into the flat opposite, which turned out to be a rather pleasant modern apartment with wooden flooring and no previous occupant. Shame about the lack of hot and cold running water though.
I spend the day alternatively scanning the streets from the roof, or sitting in the flat opposite the front door, reading. The flat has a bookshelf liberally stocked with the great and the good of English literature, and I’m working my way through Dickens. Ebeneezer Scrooge has just been visited by the spirit of Christmas Future.
I can hear something in the street outside. Is that the sound of a bicycle’s brakes? I snap the book shut and leap to my feet. Out of the front window I can see my taxi parked up on the kerb, a clear sign to whoever might see it that somebody else is here. I wait, book closed and clasped in my lap, suddenly nervous, unsure of what to do next. I don’t need to wait long.
“Hello?” The voice is quiet but clear, young, and very female. “Is somebody in there?”
I glance through to the kitchen table where I’ve left my rifle, and immediately regret bringing it with me. Turning away, I reply.
“I saw your fireworks.”
No response. The door of the apartment building swings open, and then standing in front of me is a girl of maybe sixteen, blonde hair long and tied back in a ponytail, face radiant, her short frame dressed in the most outrageous combination of dungarees, woolly jumper, Hush Puppies and a long red scarf. She looks at me as if I’ve just said the most idiotic thing she’s ever heard.
“They’re not my fireworks. I thought they were yours. I guess we’re both out of luck.” She finishes looking me up and down, then steps over towards me, hand held out. Her nails are painted all different colours. “I’m Clare.”
I stand, leaving the book on the arm of the chair, and reach out to shake her hand. “Nice to meet you Clare. Are you alone then?”
She looks around, on the defensive, and I realise the situation. I’m a tall, fit guy in his early thirties, wearing all black, and with an assortment of knives and survival gear either strapped to my belt or laid out on the coffee table. She’s a short, cute blonde teenager who probably doesn’t have even a pen-knife on her. She looks at the book, and relaxes, just a little.
“Dickens huh? We were reading him in school. Boring old fucker isn’t he?” Her tone is light, casual, but she’s looking for a connection, something human that we can share. Personally, I love the steady, plodding pace of Dickens’ work, but I’ve just finished reading Jude the Obscure, and found it almost terminally depressing.
“Yeah. You ever read Jude the Obscure? Makes me want to slit my wrists.” I try to emulate her pattern of speech, dropping into vernacular. After days steeped in high literary prose, it’s a bit of an effort, but one that pays off immediately.
“Nah, not read that. We was on a Christmas Carol. Old ghosts and shit scaring Scrooge. I preferred the film.” She’s matter-of-fact, still hostile but clearly warming to me. “So, they wasn’t your fireworks then?”
“No. It’s a good idea though, if you want to be seen. I wonder who it was?”
“Dunno. Not seen anyone else around here for ages. You’re the first since those religious nutters came through here.”
“Religious nutters?” Sounds like London’s become the focus of more than one pilgrimage since I was last here.
“Yeah, bunch of weirdos who wanted me to join them and sit around all day praying and shit. Kept banging on about how we could only be saved if we accepted God into our lives. Told them to fuck right off, and they did.” I like this kid already.
“When was that then?”
“About six weeks ago. They came through in a load of trucks and cars, just set themselves down in Trafalgar Square for a week with a bunch of lights shining up in the sky, then when a few people had joined them they pissed off again. Said they was going to carry on God’s work wherever they could. I reckon they all just lost the plot, like my mate Sheena at school. Her step-dad was into some crazy voodoo shit and she just disappeared one day. Weirdos.”
She carries on for a bit, and I figure this is probably the first time she’s spoken to anyone in a while, so I let her go on until she finally runs out of breath. We’ve both moved to sit down, at opposite ends of the huge leather sofa. I’m sat with one leg curled under the other, twisted around slightly to keep facing her. She’s cross-legged and drinking from a bottle of beer that she’s pulled from her rucksack. I decline the offer of a bottle, which earns me a shrug and another torrent of meaningless gossip from another lifetime.
“So, uh, what did you say your name was?”
“Oh, sorry,” I say, “I’m, uh, Brian.”
“Right then, uh Brian,” she mocks my hesitation, probably thinking that I just haven’t spoken to anyone else for a long time, “what’s your story?”
I tell her essentially the same thing story I told the real Brian, glossing over details of the last six months in a handful of vague sentences, dialling back the gory details and excesses of my former life whilst trying not to sound too condescending. It takes me about five minutes to get up to the present day.
“… And here I am now, waiting to see if he comes back.”
“Or she.” I’m not used to being corrected, much less by a teenager, but I let it pass.
“Yeah, I suppose so. Say, were you on a bike when you got here?”
Clare looks abashed, her cheeks flushing red. “Well, yeah. I’m too young to drive, dunno how. Besides, there’s no petrol left is there?”
An idea jumps into my head, completely unbidden. “Want to learn?”
She looks up at me, a smile breaking across her face, and it dawns on me that she’s a lot younger than sixteen. Thirteen maybe? She’s doing remarkably well for such a young kid.
“Are you fucking kidding?” She squeals with laughter, and jumps up to her feet. “When?”
I reach into my pocket and pull out the keys to the taxi, dangling them from the tip of my index finger. She bounces up and down on the spot, hair flailing behind her.
“Well, I don’t know about you, but my diary’s pretty open.”
After a few false starts it becomes clear that Clare has a real knack for driving. Within an hour she’s working her way through block shifting, her hands comedically small on the large black wheel of the taxi, but moving with a deft precision that keeps the car under tight control. I surprise myself as an adept tutor, even if I am passing on a number of bad habits. I figure that whilst emergency stops should stay on the curriculum, there’s little need for indicating or making obvious checks of the mirrors every few seconds. I pretend not to notice how carefully she steers around the occasional pile of remains that we encounter.
We take a break for beer and crisps after the first couple of hours, Clare sitting up on the bonnet whilst I lean against it, chatting through what we’ve just covered. For the first time that I can remember I’m smiling and laughing and making jokes, and it’s like the entire last year hasn’t happened at all. For a few hours we’re just two normal people enjoying driving around town.
It’s late in the evening before we decide to call it a night. There’s no real discussion about it, Clare just stops and gets out of the driver’s seat and walks around to the passenger side whilst I haul myself across into the tiny space where she’s dragged the driver’s seat as far forward as possible. I end up with my legs stretched across the gear stick whilst I fiddle with the seat to get it pushed back, and then then twist my legs around to get straightened. Clare waits patiently whilst I do this, then climbs in. When we get back to the flat she doesn’t even glance at her bike.
“What’s for dinner then?” She asks.
And just like that, I’m not alone.
The next day is New Year’s Eve. I wake up on the sofa to the smell of fresh coffee. There’s a large duvet covering me, but the air is freezing. Clare is singing to herself in the kitchen, then walks over and hands me a steaming cup of coffee. I look up at her with immense gratitude, and haul myself upright. The coffee is black and strong, which she apologises for, but it’s just the way I like it.
“So, more driving today?” I sip the coffee, the liquid is scalding but a welcome tonic for the mild hangover that I’m so used to waking up with.
“I want to learn how to use that.” She points at the gun on the kitchen table. I raise my eyebrows at her in a silent “oh?”. She just levels a stare at me, and I know I can’t refuse.
I drive us up to the river, a black bin liner full of empty bottles in the back of the taxi. Clare is fiddling with a bullet in the passenger seat, her impatience clear but well managed. She rolls the brass jacket between her small fingers, the dull copper tip pointing outwards.
“Why have you got a rifle? Why not a nine millimetre or a shotgun or something?” Clare has obviously watched too many bad American TV shows.
“Because a pistol is useless for hunting, and a shotgun’s only good for shooting birds out of the sky. With a rifle you can actually kill what you hit.”
The answer placates her for a while, and I imagine that she’s thinking about cops blasting away with a revolver, barely bothering to aim, felling bad guys from a hundred yards with a single shot.
“What have you hunted then?”
“Deer, mostly.” She turns to look at me, an incriminating glare in her eyes that makes me feel as if I’ve just killed Bambi’s mother. “Don’t worry, I didn’t kill anything.” I realise it’s best that I don’t tell her about the dogs. “Take a look in that bag.”
She rummages in the black knapsack in the foot well and pulls out the part of antler that I keep with me. Noticing the rounded semicircle at the fractured base she turns the bullet around and slides it into the groove. It’s a perfect fit.
“Wow.”
She doesn’t say anything else until we reach the South Bank, and I drive lost in the memory of that meadow. The stag’s face hovers at the edge of my vision, eyes boring into mine until I pull the taxi to a halt. “Go away,” I close my eyes for a moment, willing my mind clear, and when I open them the stag is gone.
The noise of the rifle echoes out across the river and is lost to the far reaches of the city. It takes a lot of attempts, but over a couple of hours Clare learns to sight properly, squeeze the trigger slowly, load using the bolt action, and starts scoring hits with our beer bottle shooting gallery. I’ve got the bottles lined up on the wall and we’re firing out over the river. I know there’s nobody around, but it still makes sense to be safe.
We finish the shooting lesson in time for lunch, when I take count of the remaining ammunition and realise that we’re going to run out if we continue. Clare is disappointed – she’s just started hitting targets with a degree of accuracy – but I want to make sure we don’t find ourselves with a gun and no ammunition for it. She suggests that we could probably find some more, and I don’t disagree, but I’m also not in the mood for a scavenger hunt across London.
Lunch is vegetable soup from cans with crispbread, which Clare wolfs down, followed by chocolate bars. It’s not haute cuisine, but we’re pretty much stuck with whatever is left on the shelves of the nearest shop. It’s a growing concern of mine, that sometime in the next year or two there won’t be anything left that’s edible and I’ll be stuck on subsistence farming. We’ll be stuck, I correct myself.
Clare’s been living off essentially nothing for the past year, that much I can tell just by looking at her. She’s gaunt, in the way that looks wrong on a child, like something from the third world. Dark rings circle her eyes, her cheeks are hollow and her skin is pale and wan. Her bursts of energy and excitement are short-lived, and I wonder how she’s managed to stay alive for so long without anyone to look out for her. She hasn’t volunteered anything about herself yet other than referring to long-dead school friends, and I assume it’s best not to press her for details. Myself, I’d just as rather forget about my old life, it’s too depressing to think about, and reminiscing won’t bring it back. My mind starts to drift again, faces floating in front of me, the details of appearance cloaked in the vagueness of old memories. It’s all slipping away, and I know that it won’t be long until I can’t remember anything with certainty. This doesn’t upset me as much as I thought it would.
We pass the afternoon strolling along the South Bank, taking a couple of hours to wander through the Tate Modern, the beams of our torches lending a touch of surrealism to the experience of art. The giant spider outside the entrance takes on it’s own life as a guardian to the collected cultural legacy inside, and Clare asks me dozens of questions that I can’t answer. I lie as much as I think I can get away with, covering my patchy knowledge of art with whatever I can glean from the cards that accompany each exhibit. Clare seems suitably impressed by my feigned expertise, encouraging me to greater heights of exaggeration and improvisation. I realise that I’ve been rumbled when she starts giggling, and start answering her questions with a resigned “I don’t know”.
Clare grabs my jumper by the sleeve, and I stop and turn to face her. She shines her torch directly in my face and demands:
“Why aren’t you answering my questions? I like your stories, they’re more interesting than the bollocks we learned about art in school.”
So we continue our tour.
Sunset is fast approaching, and Clare and I are stood on London Bridge watching the sky turn pink and red as the sun dips towards the horizon. It’s a beautiful moment, London is entirely peaceful and we watch in silence until the last rays vanish behind the dark silhouette of the skyline. Overhead it’s a crisp, cloudless evening, and already there are a huge number of stars visible. I’ve come to love the clarity of the night sky over the last year, and cannot for the life of me imagine life without it.
We’re both still stood on the bridge, me pointing out the stars of Orion for Clare, when the unmistakable beam of a searchlight sweeps across the sky. Clare gasps, and looks up at my confused expression.
“What is it?” I ask her. She can’t hide the fear in her voice when she answers me.
“It’s the religious weirdos. They’ve come back.”
“Clare?” I look down at her, and she’s trembling. “What’s wrong?”
“Can we go back to the flat? Please?”
“Sure, come on, let’s get back to the car.”
We walk back in silence, the presence of the gun slung across my shoulder suddenly a comforting weight. On the drive back Clare keeps looking back out the window, every glimpse of the searchlight beam causing an intake of breath, or a hand clasped to her mouth. If I push the issue I know it will hurt her, but I can’t ignore the fact that something terrible has happened to her, probably at the hands of these religious arseholes. A number of possibilities spring to mind, but the one that seems most likely is that she was raped. I have an overwhelming desire to kill whoever is responsible in a slow and agonising manner.
“There was this guy called Richard, but everyone called him ‘Reverend’, like he was the head of the church I guess.” She starts talking without prompting, without looking at me. Her knees are tucked up under her chin, and her voice is barely audible over the engine of the taxi.
“When they arrived they shone these big lights over the city so that everyone would be able to see them. I’d met a couple of other people, this nice old guy called Peter who was camped out in Hyde Park in a caravan, and a younger guy, more of a boy really, and his name was Brian too. Well, we all turned up about the same time in Trafalgar Square and the Witnesses – that’s what they called themselves, the Witnesses – they was all there watching Richard preach to them about how God had judged mankind and left them as witnesses to his judgement. That it was their job to travel and testify about what God had done. He was stood up on the bonnet of this big truck, like a tanker, and just spouting this rubbish at them and they all stood around nodding like it was the most normal thing in the world.
“So then he sees me and Peter, and we’re walking out to see what this is all about, and he just points at us and says something about rejoicing, and then everyone’s looking at us. Peter turns out to be a Bible-basher as well, and he goes over and starts talking to the preacher bloke, to Richard, and the others kinda just listen to everything that they talk about. One of them comes and talks to me about souls and heaven and shit that I couldn’t care less about, but he’s get a really gentle voice so I just nod and let him talk for a bit.
“Finally Peter comes over to me and says that we’ve been saved, and that he has like a real purpose to his life. He’s all chummy with the preacher and he says ‘Clare, the Reverend is going to take us with him’, and I think no he’s fucking not, but I just smile and let them talk because I don’t want to upset Peter.
“And this guy puts his hand on my arm and tells me not to worry anymore, that I’m safe and that everything is going to be okay, and you know what? I started to believe him. He told me that his name was Richard, and that he’d found his purpose, and that I didn’t need to be afraid or hungry or tired ever again, and that I could have God’s love if I joined them.
“Then I go and start crying like a fucking little kid or something, and Richard’s got his arm around me and telling me that it’s okay, and I guess he must have taken me into a caravan, because we’re sat on a bed in this pokey little room, and it’s just the two of us. He gives me a drink and smiles at me like it’s some kind of secret that I’m going to get in trouble for drinking fucking booze, and then I start to think that I probably shouldn’t be alone with this stranger, ‘cos he’s still got an arm around me.
“And I don’t know what happened next. I really don’t. I just remember he was on top of me and everything seemed like it was really far away, and he must have been, I mean, because I had to pull my jeans up, and I hit him with something as hard as I could and just ran and ran and …”
Clare stops talking. Her shoulders shudder, but she’s completely silent, I can’t even hear her breathing. I’ve stopped the car in the middle of the road, engine still running, working very hard to keep my entire body from shaking with rage. I have no idea what to do, what to say. I want to reach out and touch her and hold her and tell her that nobody will ever do that to her again, not whilst I live. I want to take it all away, and give her back her life, as if nothing bad could ever happen in the world.
I know I can’t do any of that.
There is one thing I can do though.
I reach over and put my hand on her arm, near her elbow. She flinches, then looks at me, her face awash in pain and guilt and shame. There’s nothing I can do for her now, but I tell her it’s going to be okay, and that nobody will ever do that to her again. I tell her that tomorrow I’ll get her a gun of her own, and teach her how to shoot properly. She nods, then collapses into my arms. I hold her for a very long time, then drive home.
At midnight a series of fireworks go off a few blocks away. My mysterious pyromaniac is celebrating the turn of the New Year. Clare is asleep in the bedroom, and I check to make sure she hasn’t woken up. Then I check the lock on the door, and all of the windows. Finally, I settle down on the sofa, rifle across my lap, and wait for the dawn.
It’s a long night.