Before the war — which war, I don’t know, there’s been so blooming many, all won of course by the great Motherland — anyway before the wars, Gramps had been the senior scene painter at the big opera house in Zone One. Maybe there weren’t zones in those days, but that’s not the point. No, the point is that once, at the start of the wars, Gramps had painted airplanes on the ground. They looked from the sky like the real McCoy. After that war, the Motherland introduced the first program of re-education. Gramps was forced to attend it for painting those planes. Some of his friends refused to do it. Some were the wrong breed, wrong color, wrong nationality. They weren’t allowed a re-education. The Greenflies needed their maggot meat. As for Gramps, he passed the test. Just.
They — him, Gran, and Dad and Mum — were moved here just before I was born. Anyway, that’s another way by the by.
The reason I thought about Gramps being a scene painter was because of the wall he had built and painted at the bottom of Cellar Street. You see, Gramps had painted a perfect illusion of a perfect wall. It slid in tight, right next to the alien growth, a giant mushroom-like thing that shone with an unnatural light. It stank as bad as the lines of the Anthem of the Motherland.
Hidden in its pungent, fleshy folds was a small lock and if it was jiggled in a certain way the wall would slide open. Only when the wall was shut again did the lights flicker on in the secret chamber. They ran off an old battery that Mr. Lush had rigged up.
It was because of the painted wall that, after the Lushes were taken, Gramps took to working outside in the front garden. He looked as if he was pruning the white roses. Secretly, he was putting in a warning system to tell us if anyone was in the house while we were down in the storeroom in Cellar Street.
I tell you this for a bagful of humbugs, it was eerily deserted under those houses. All we could hear down there was the conversation of rats. A very stubborn thing is your common brown rat. I often wondered how it was the rats became fat when we were so very lean.
A week ago, I came home from school, lost in a daydream. This one involved our flying saucer landing on planet Juniper. To me it was like having a cinema in my head. I could see Hector touching down, the Juniparians waiting to greet him, smiles on their faces. They were dressed . . . I stopped as I reached the kitchen. Gramps wasn’t there. Where the frick-fracking hell was he? Panic flooded through me. I couldn’t see straight, couldn’t think straight, my head was about to blow a fuse. I rushed outside into the drizzle. He had to be in the vegetable plot, he bloody well had to be in the vegetable plot.
That’s when I saw the door to the air-raid shelter had been opened.
No! No, no — he hadn’t gone through the tunnel. He wouldn’t do that, would he? I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. All of me felt about to break apart. That was when I spied the enormous boots sticking out of the potting shed.
I ran back indoors. Gramps was in the kitchen, taking off his old army coat. I couldn’t speak, so I dragged him to the potting shed. Inside, there was this fricking moon man desperately pulling at his huge, steamed-up helmet with his space gloves, his whole body jerking.
Gramps said, “Go and work in the vegetable patch.”
“But what about —”
“I’ll take care of this.”
Frick-fracking hell. I started to dig, did my best to make it look as if I was digging for my supper rather than for our lives. I knew what Gramps was trying to do in the potting shed. Take off the moon man’s helmet and fast, otherwise I had better start to dig a grave. I heard a crack and someone gasping for air.
After a bit, Gramps came out of the potting shed and closed the door. Together we went into the kitchen and turned the radio on, razor loud.
“And once those feet did tread upon silver sand
And footprints deep marked out new moons of Motherland”
Gramps whispered over the din, “We will have to wait until it’s dark.”
We waited and waited until night pricked the old sun’s balloon.
Only then were we able to bring the moon man into the kitchen.
He seemed giant-tall, very clumsy in all the clothes he wore. It was strange to see close up a face that was so familiar from the posters. Here he was, ELD9, all the hope of the moon landings rinsed from his features. Left in its place were worry lines etched deep into his forehead. The twinkle in his eye extinguished, the cheeky smile a grimace. We sat him down on a chair and gave him tea, which he drunk from the corner of his mouth as if each sip was painful.
The moon man said nothing. Then he opened his mouth to show us he had no tongue to speak with.
I guessed that’s what they had done to my mum.
The day Mr. Gunnell killed Little Eric Owen and a rocket was launched into space was the day I knew for certain that Gramps and me were unlikely ever to make it out of Zone Seven. Alive, that is. Owning a television is enough of an offense in itself for both of us to be sent away to be re-educated.
By the time we reached our house the front door had been kicked in. There was no need — we never locked it. There was not much point. Inside they had done a very thorough job. There was nothing that hadn’t been touched or turned over. It wasn’t the broken I minded, I just didn’t like who did the breaking. I looked at Gramps. He put his arm around me.
We tried to salvage what we could in the vegetable patch then worked inside, tidying up the house by candlelight.
Gramps had never taken down the blackout curtains so at least no one could see in, but we knew the detectives had returned. We made a cup of tea and went upstairs to bed. We snuffed out the candle, we waited a hard, hungry hour. I was half-dreaming of Spam fritters. Our tummies rumbled. It was after midnight when we finally went down to the cellar, taking some bread and the Spam fritters with us.
Gramps put the traps with that day’s catch of rats near the stairs that led up to our house. Then we set off again into what you would think was the farthest part of Cellar Street. The pungent smell hit you down there. That was the reason the leather-coat men’s dogs were unable to sniff out the moon man. That alien fungus smothered everything with its earthy stench. It even glowed in the dark, looking almost alive, hungry, feeding off the damp and the dark of the house, brittling its bones to the core.
We opened the sliding door. Cripes, I can tell you it was a relief to see the moon man. Not to mention the two hens and the radio Mr. Lush had wired up so we could hear, once in a while, the evil empires of the world speak words of comfort to us.
The moon man stood up, hugged Gramps. I went to find the eggs, feed the hens and make sure no rats had got in. Then I lit the Bunsen burner and put the kettle over it. We drank our tea and ate the bread and the Spam fritters. A feast.
The moon man tried to talk to us with drawings. They weren’t clever like Gramps’s pictures but they told us the story. I could see clearly what was happening behind the wall.
Gramps got up, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, and retuned the radio. It crackled and hissed. He fiddled with the set until we heard the Voice, the only one Gramps trusted to tell the truth. That is, he said, if there is any such thing as a truth. Hard to tell when so much is a lie.
The Voice spoke.
“The monstrous Motherland may claim to have launched a rocket to the moon, but our scientists believe that such an expedition is not and will not be possible for many years to come.
“The radiation from the moon’s atmosphere will prevent man from landing there. We must not be forced into surrender by propaganda. We must carry on with the fight, regardless. I call on all Obstructors to support the advancing Allies. Sleep easy in your beds. Do not be frightened into believing that the Motherland has the capacity to fire weapons from the moon’s surface. Instead concentrate your energies for the final battle. Afterwards we will live in a free world.”
The alarm bell rang, a red-painted lightbulb flashed. Gramps looked up, and so did I. We both knew what that meant. There was an intruder in the house. We had less than a minu
te to cover our tracks.
Terror is an odd thing. It has made me panic, it has made me spew, but this time, I felt a calm fury.
Gramps opened the painted wall and the moon man locked it behind us. A torch beam shined into the dark of Cellar Street.
Quickly we picked up the traps. Gramps took two, I took one.
“What are you doing down there?” a man called out.
“Rats,” shouted Gramps.
I was closest to the stairs that led up to the kitchen. The torch shined in my face. The light blinded me and I put up my hand to cover my eyes and by doing that I accidentally pressed the release button on the trap and the rat leaped up the stairs, past the intruder into the kitchen. A shot rang out.
Gramps was by my side. He went up the stairs first, carrying the cages with the other two rats in them. In the kitchen, sitting at the broken table, was a man we had never seen before. He laid down his revolver and lit a cigarette. The rat was dead in the corner.
“Mr. Treadwell,” said the man. “I have come to take the visitor to safety. We haven’t much time.”
Gramps and I both knew that if this man really did belong to the Obstructors, he would never have shot the rat. The gun had no silencer on it. The noise would have been heard outside, loud and with bells on. The detectives in their car would have to be deaf, daft, or both not to have heard and come running.
The man was a joker.
You see, that intruder was too well-dressed. Much like the dead rats he was too clean, too well-fed.
“I don’t know who you are,” said Gramps, “but I don’t think you should be here. I would like you to leave. Standish, go and tell the detectives outside we have an Obstructor here.”
The man picked up his revolver. “I am here to help you.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Gramps.
“I think,” I said, “you are one of the people who broke into our house today and found nothing.”
That got the man agitated. He took out another cigarette. You don’t see many of those. Tobacco was for the few. No freedom fighter would ever smoke those smokes. They have the crest of the Motherland printed on them. The man was a prick if he thought we were that thick.
It was pitch-black outside. Only that eyesore of a building at the end of our road was lit up, starbright, earthbound. I crept towards the waiting car in which the two detectives sat. I made them jump out of their seats. One wound down his steamed-up window, his mouth full of sausage. The car smelled of farts.
“We have an intruder in the house,” I said. “You’d better come.”
The supposed Obstructor made a feeble attempt to run.
We watched as the car did a three-point turn and gave chase. It was pathetic. Even we could see they all knew one another. The “Obstructor” shrugged. The back door of the wasps’ car was opened for him.
I tell you this, if he had been the genuine McCoy, they would have shot him to where no kingdom comes.
In the kitchen, Gramps had his coat on.
“What are you doing?” I said.
He shook his head and put his fingers to his lips.
“Taking the rat out.”
But I knew he wasn’t. He was off. Where, I didn’t know, couldn’t say. I wanted to cling to that coat of his, beg him to stay. He wouldn’t. I could see by the look in his eyes that he was going to go, come what may.
I slept on and off with my head on my arms at the kitchen table. I hadn’t dared move. Call it superstition. It must have been about six that morning when I woke. It was light, had been light for a long time. Still Gramps hadn’t returned. To tell the fricking truth, I was no longer calm. I was bloody terrified.
The moon man emerged from the cellar, relieved to see me. He still wore his gravity boots, which he didn’t need as there was plenty of gravity there. Too much. In fact, I thought a little less of it might be a good idea.
I made tea for the moon man while he rinsed his mouth in salty water. It was all the medicine we had to offer. That and the rest of the aspirins. I saw him wince. I knew he shouldn’t be up here, it was far too dangerous. But I didn’t want him to leave, didn’t want to be on my own, waiting. He sat down. I still found it hard to look at the word sewn on his space suit: ELD9.
He wrote the word Gramps and I said, “He’s not here.”
I could see that worried him. I tell you this, it worried me too. I wasn’t even going to think of the what-if scenarios.
We sat in silence, the moon man and me. I knew he couldn’t speak but there is silence and there is silence, if you get my meaning. I’ll tell you this for nothing: I was born into a frick-fracking nightmare. The only way out was in my head. In my head there are Croca-Colas, Cadillacs. There is planet Juniper and Hector to rescue us all.
My bones nearly jumped free from my muscles when I heard a noise in the back garden. The moon man disappeared back to Cellar Street. I washed up the cups, put them away.
I don’t think I was breathing when Gramps said, “Let me in.”
“Where have you been?” I asked as I opened the back door. His face was all smoky, his shirt torn and burnt. He wasn’t wearing his hat or his coat. No. Miss Phillips was. She stood behind him. She looked as if she had been beaten up pretty badly.
“What happened?”
Gramps just put the kettle on and made tea. Miss Phillips was shaking.
“They set fire to her house. I knew they would,” he said. “It was only a matter of time.”
I took a bowl of water to the table. That was one fricking bruise she had.
Gramps lifted up Miss Phillips’s face towards his and gently wiped away the smoke. I watched all this and felt that there was something more there.
When she winced, he said softly, “It’s all right, love.”
I thought I understood. Well, I thought I did, but hell’s bells, I wasn’t that sure.
I placed the cup of tea near her.
She put both her hands round the cup and stared at the grain of the table. Gramps was now at the sink, washing his face and hands. I turned on the radio again. It was playing music for the workers of the Motherland.
Quietly, she said, “Thank you.”
Gramps returned to where Miss Phillips was sitting. He took off her hat. Miss Phillips’s hair had always been long, neatly wound into a bun. It was now so short it stood up in tufts, and blood was mixed up in it.
I knew that haircut and I knew exactly what that haircut meant. It was what they did to the Obstructors. Strip them naked, take away all their clothes, cut their hair off. If it was a woman they didn’t bother to kill her, not outright. They left that to the young, hungry vultures. The Hans Fielders and the boys from the torture lounge.
It was a slower death but it gave them a bit of practice in killing. You couldn’t be squeamish if you joined the Youth of the Motherland. The Mothers for Purity would be ashamed of them if they hadn’t mastered the art of butchery before they’d left school. I mean, it’s one of those rights of way you have to go through. It certainly showed up the fags from the thugs. A thug would have beaten Miss Phillips’s brains out for breakfast. Goodness knows what he would have done to her by lunchtime.
It was only then that it dawned on me that Miss Phillips had protected me at school. Like the time Mr. Gunnell tried to make the whole class join the Youth of the Motherland. It was Miss Phillips who had argued that they wouldn’t want a boy like me, a boy who had trouble tying his shoelaces. She probably told Mr. Hellman I was making progress in Miss Connolly’s class. Why didn’t I work that out before?
I emptied the bowl of dirty water and refilled it.
Gramps tilted her face to his and kissed her. Well, I wasn’t expecting that. I mean, Gramps is too old for all that. Surely when you are in your fifties that kind of thing stops? That myth had just been torpedoed out of the water. Gramps put his arm round Miss Phillips and she rested her head on his stomach.
“So that’s it,” I said. They both looked at me as if they had forgotten I was there. ?
??You and Miss Phillips. I mean, how long have you been . . . courting?”
They both smiled.
“Three years.”
Well, you could have knocked me sideways with a feather. Three years.
“It’s been hard since the Lushes disappeared,” said Gramps.
I suppose me sleeping on top of his bed like a dog hadn’t helped.
Miss Phillips said, “Harry told me about the moon man and we have been doing our best to make contact with the Obstructors so that the information can be moved up the line. But Zone Seven is closed off from the outside world.”
The music stopped and the Voice of the Motherland broke in.
“Today, the leaders of the evil empires agreed to convene in our great capital, Tyker, to see our achievements with their own eyes. Earth will behold the first pictures ever to be taken of our new-won territory, the moon.
“Praise be the Motherland.”
There was an unmistakable cacophony outside our house. Boots hitting the pavement, car doors slamming, people shouting. Just one sound was missing from the orchestra of fear. They hadn’t brought the dogs with them, not this time. I was glued to the floor. We had been caught. It was all over.
Only when Gramps said fiercely, “Standish, move!” did I unfreeze.
We hid Miss Phillips upstairs at the back of Mum and Dad’s old monster of a wardrobe.
“That’ll be the first place they’ll look,” I said.
Gramps just pulled open the wardrobe door.
“No, the Greenflies aren’t that smart. They are getting greener by the day.”
Gramps was going into his bedroom when I remembered his coat. I ran back, took it from Miss Phillips and raced down the stairs. Another car screeched to a halt.
I hung up the coat, checked the table then opened the front door before they could kick it in again.