Last Man in London, page 8
‘Come on granddad, who is to say she is an alcoholic? I’ve seen everyone I know drunk at least once or twice, including you. Although, to be fair, never anyone quite as reckless as Mira.’
‘How many times have you seen her like that then?’
‘Twice.’
’In four years?’ asked Edgar.
George thought about the question, ‘yes, I think so.’
‘Then she has been hiding it from you and you need to understand she has a problem. So does Mira. And until she does she will continue to hide, just as she has for the last four years.’
George sat silently. He thought of all those unanswered calls and the instant message replies and realised that Edgar was right. If she had spoken to him then he would have heard it in her voice. She had not wanted him to know.
Edgar appeared to understand. ‘It’s one of the most difficult things in the world to confront George. When somebody you thought you knew turns out to have been somebody else all along. Somebody entirely different. It’s the same as lying to you, it is fraud.’
George thought about something Tibha had mentioned during the previous week when she said that liars needed to have great memories. He realised that Mira’s memory wasn’t so great. It was why her excuses were always slightly different between one telling and the next.
Edgar studied the boy and could see the sadness in the slump of his shoulders.
‘There is nothing you can do to help her you know,’ he repeated, ‘unless she asks for it. There is nothing anybody can do unless a person admits to having a problem and then looks for help. If she doesn’t then she will still be acting in the same way in forty years time, if she survives that long. She will be incredible for a few months and then gone again. I have seen it all before.’
George knew Edgar was right. Mira had crashed her car once whilst she was drunk and nearly killed herself. And if she attacked anybody else as she had him then there was no doubt she was going to be in great danger at some point, if she hadn’t been already. Perhaps even more than once. George knew that he didn’t want such a drama in his life. He already suffered from enough anxiety without having to worry about another car crash every time Mira went on the missing list.
‘Alcoholism is incurable George.’ Edgar continued. ‘It is controllable but that is a life long fight which you have to know you could lose on any day. Tomorrow, or on some day long into the future. You never know when it will happen although you do know that day is coming; that phone call will probably come. I knew a girl once whose mother was just the same. She must have been in her seventies when I first met her. She was a beautiful soul, kind, thoughtful and considerate. But, every now and then, when the craving took her she was gone. I lost count of the number of times we found her, after a few days, in a hotel room, or barn, surrounded by empty bottles of wine. She had been going off on those benders since she was thirty. How old is Mira?’
‘Twenty-seven.’ George replied.
‘Marriage Licence son...? Family and happily ever after? Do you really want to spend the next forty years waiting for that phone call? Is that how you want to live your life George?’
‘But we all drink Granddad. You do every day.’
‘Yes, but I am not an alcoholic George. You either are or you aren’t and I know I am not.’
‘How?’
‘Because a few years ago my doctor, after the annual check up, told me that all of my major organs were still functioning perfectly normally. She couldn’t believe it. To be honest, nor could I and, as usual, she told me to cut down on drinking and smoking. I reminded her that she said that every year and that I didn’t want to. And that was when she said to me, ‘you don’t want to or you can’t?’ It made me stop to think about it and so from that moment onwards I didn’t take a single drink. None at all.’
‘And what happened?’ Asked George.
‘Absolutely nothing. I looked in the medical archive for the symptoms of alcohol withdrawal for alcoholics, or at least for regular drinkers, and I was expecting to experience sleepless nights, sweats, fatigue, anxiety, depression, cravings, headaches, nausea, heart palpitations, trembling and clammy skin. Go and look it up for yourself, the list goes on and on.’
George was listening carefully. ‘And,’ he asked, ‘so what did you experience?’
‘Nothing at all. None of them. For six months I didn’t feel any different to when I was drinking a couple of glasses of whiskey everyday. Sometimes half a bottle and sometimes the whole lot. I was so disappointed. I had spent so long trying to be an alcoholic and it turned I just wasn’t. You either are or you aren’t. I‘m not and nor are you. But I think Mira is. And that will never change, she sounds far too self absorbed and with very little self-respect.’
George thought for a while. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ he groaned, ‘help her or don’t get involved. Am I in time or is it too late? Is the glass still half-full or is it half-empty?’
‘Don’t start with that philosophy bollocks son. Philosophy only asks questions, it never answers them,’ Edgar paused for thought. ‘But I do have the answer to that particular problem that has troubled your finest minds for centuries,’ he added cheerfully.
Half-full or half-empty?’ George looked up and asked him.
‘Yes,’ said Edgar, ’either way it needs topping up, pass me that bottle.’
George tapped onto his hy-dev notepad to bring up the list of questions he had for Edgar, but tossed it to the side when he saw that, once again, the page was blank.
‘You mentioned something about love the other day, what was it?’
Edgar studied George and finally said, ‘there is no such thing, no such word. There used to be. It used to describe a sort of feeling that would cause people to do all sorts of stupid and irrational things. It caused more harm than it created any good. It was too easy to say and too easy to believe. Eventually it became meaningless. Respect and trust and patience were what really mattered in any relationship. Love was just a word we used to get ourselves out of trouble. Or laid.’
George thought about the words ‘respect’ and ‘trust’ and ‘patience’ and he was running out of all three with Mira. It was a pity, he thought. But that was all. It wasn’t a disaster, just a damn shame.
‘All good things pass George and some of them should do,’ Edgar added, ‘and then never come back again.’
‘But I thought love was doing something good for a person that they would never, perhaps, know you had done for them.’ He pressed on. ‘You know, acts of kindness when nobody was watching. To know there is nothing in it for you, but to do a good thing anyway, wasn’t that love granddad?’
’No, that was called kindness.’ Edgar assured him.
George tried to remember everything else Tibha had told him. ‘Wasn’t love a beautiful feeling, from the top of your head to the tips of your toes that mostly gathered around the heart. Wasn’t it a gift of the rarest kind that could emerge over a period of time or could appear in an instant? And something to do with butterflies?’
‘What bollocks is this?’ Edgar asked him. ‘Have you been on those funny herbal smokes again? I warned you about those. Look, love was a temporary insanity. It was excitement, enthusiasm, passion, promises, beliefs and the desire to have sex at every chance you get. And then, when that and all the other things have burned away, and the promises have not been kept, you had what was left. If you were one of the lucky ones.’
‘Which is?’
Respect, compassion, honesty, trust, loyalty and all with somebody you actually quite like, hopefully.’
‘And have you ever had that?’ George asked the old man.
‘Many times, it’s wonderful. But people come and people go George. People enter your life and then they leave again, for one reason or another. You just have to accept it will keep happening.’
George thought again of Mira. He didn’t really want her out of his life. But he didn’t particularly want her in it either. It was a problem. Mira was his problem. ‘I’m just tired granddad, I am going to bed. I’m going to stay in my old room here if that’s alright with you?’
Edgar looked at the wall clock. ‘It’s only H22.30,’ he told him.
‘It’s been twenty-four long hours. Good night.’ George then turned back and scooped up his whiskey glass, ‘but I’ll just take this along for some company.’ He was asleep before his head hit the bedside cabinet.
The following morning George was woken by a message to his hy-dev which read, Tibha; ‘Morning Mr Dickens, how is the weekend on the wild African frontier?’ George laid back and smiled to himself. He thought of Tibha and wondered whether he should reply straight away, or if that would appear too keen. But if he didn’t then would it seem a little indifferent? He decided to wait for an hour which he hoped would fall somewhere between the two problems. He then noticed a second message that had arrived at the hour 3.45.
Mira; ‘I said I was sorry.’
George deleted it. He started going over in his mind everything that had happened, trying to make sense of it. His heart started beating; a hot sweat spread across his forehead, cheeks and then ran through his chest. And then his insides began rattling. George quickly reached over and rummaged his case for the diazepam, took two of them and then laid back to watch the sunrise over the Central Complex as he waited for them to calm him down.
He then opened his notepad and began to look again for the notes he had made for Edgar at least twice over the previous few days but there was still no trace to be found. Instead he patiently opened another page and wrote the words;
1: Christmas.
2: Love.
3: My mother and father.
4: The last government.
5: His role in the Corporation.
6: His experiments.
7: Religion.
George considered all seven questions before deleting ‘love,’ as he had already heard quite enough of that. He also deleted the question about Edgar’s role in the Corporation as that could wait. Right then he didn’t need to know, it was only a curiosity. He then deleted mother and father and was left with;
1: Christmas
2: The last Government
3: His experiments
4: Religion
This time he took great care to save the note in four separate locations, restarted his hy-dev and immediately looked in all four places. In each file and on each server the note had finally remained exactly as he had written it. George wondered if the word ‘Corporation’ had anything to do with it.
At the big pine table Edgar was his usual, cheerful morning self, just as George had remembered.
‘You still here?’ he grunted.
George ignored him and went out onto the balcony. The fresh, crisp November air stung his lungs as he took in great mouthfuls. The diazepam was working and George could feeling himself calming down into an unusually good mood. He called inside and reminded Edgar that he had a packet on the table and should take some himself. He then tapped a reply into his hy-dev for Tibha; ‘a disaster, came back to CC last night, see you Monday.’ His finger hovered over the send option and then he deleted it instead. ‘Why would she want to know that?’ he asked himself. ‘Why would he want her to know that?’
George joined Edgar at the old farmhouse table in the corner of the room and poured himself some coffee. Edgar was scrolling through the news feeds on his hy-dev before he announced, ‘Damn Arabs, they are still at war with each other. I thought there would be none of them left by now. Still, they will all be old men soon enough, or dead.’
‘What are you talking about?’ George asked him.
‘Did you know there used to be nearly two billion of them?’
‘Who?’
‘There was once nearly two billion people living in the Middle East or practicing their religion. Islam it was called. Those that remain still call it that’
‘That’s impossible,’ replied George. ‘There are only about two hundred million people in the entire Western Corporation. I read somewhere that it was the same in the tribal Middle East. I know for sure there are only one billion people living in the whole world. I read a population census the other day.’
‘That’s about right now,’ Edgar told him. ‘But when I was your age there were about two billion of us and about two billion of them.’
‘Four billion people? How much of that diazepam have you taken?’ George asked him.
Edgar ignored the remark and, without looking up, he added, ‘that’s was just your Christians and your Muslims. When you include all the others there were over seven billion people living on this one tiny planet.’
‘Ridiculous,’ George told him, and then tapped a new message to Tibha; ‘back on CC, had to return early as I think my grandfather has gone mad.’ This time he sent it.
‘Why do you think that is ridiculous?’ Edgar asked him carefully, still not looking up from his news feed.
‘Seven billion people?’ George questioned him, ‘I just told you, I have seen the census from last year and it was estimated that there are around a billion people living on planet earth just now. Where do you suppose six billion people disappeared to? Explain that.’
Finally Edgar looked up and George was studying his hy-dev, waiting for a reply from Tibha. It pinged him a message.
Mira; ‘why aren’t you at home. Constance says you are out, where are you?’ George deleted it. He felt like man with a terminal illness. Edgar decided to remain silent. George was asking all the right questions but appeared to be otherwise distracted. Small personal issues occupied what little attention he had today. He had no room for the big story. Not for today, at least. George slumped back into his chair.
‘I think I need a head transplant,’ he announced, ‘is that possible yet? So what happened to six billion people over the last forty five years? Was there a war, a famine, a plague and, if so, why don’t I know about it?’
Edgar again stayed silent for a few moments. He wasn’t going to lie to George but he also wasn’t quite ready for him to know the complete truth, at least not yet. He would have to find that out for himself.
‘I have spent three quarters of my life being so careful,’ he began. But George was studying his hy-dev. It was Mira again; ‘where ARE you?’
George was about to close his device down when another message flashed up.
Tibha; ‘at a loose end today on the CC, you around for lunch?’
George reassembled his thoughts and said, ‘granddad, I want to know about Christmas before I go back to the work station on Tuesday. It might help me in correcting Dickens. After all, you actually remember it.’
Edgar straightened up to form a reply and then saw George tapping into his hy-dev, ‘that would be nice, where and when?’ And so he kept his counsel, for the moment. George deleted his message and looked up again, ‘so, six billion people, what happened then, was there a nuclear war? I have read about that. I read about the atomic bomb and the nuclear cold war. They warned us in the Academy about a repeat of that. Is that what happened granddad?’
‘No.’
‘Then what the hell happened to all of those people?’ George asked.
‘Nothing really happened to them,’ Edgar began. ‘Nobody was killed, well, not that many. And there were no food shortages or famine, nobody starved. Well, not in the West they didn’t. Infertility was the problem. It all started with the final war that began in 2001 of the old calendar, of the old democracy.’
George’s hy-dev lit up once more and he was immediately drawn to it.
Mira: ‘Do you hate me now?’
’Are you listening to me son?’ Edgar demanded.
‘No. Yes. Wait a minute, what did you just say. Six billion people died because of what?’
‘Well, five or six billion, give or take. And I told you no-one was killed. Well, not all at once. The reason was two-fold. First of all was the great final war that began in 2001 between the West and the religion of Islam. Many in the West claimed it was over the oil, the old fossil fuel source that was found mainly in the countries of the Middle East that were dominated by the people of the Islamic faith. But, of course, it was far more sinister than that. The war was never about oil. If it was then the leaders of the old democracies would have just sat down and thrashed out deals with despots and barbarians, as they had done for centuries before. No, it was about one religious faith imposing their medieval beliefs upon another. The leaders of Islam insisted the whole world must follow their faith and obey their laws. And they were pretty damn committed to achieving it as well. Over two thirds of the world’s Muslims believed their own religious law was more important than the laws of the Division they were living in.’
Finally George was paying attention.
‘This frightened people.’ Edgar went on. ‘Fewer and fewer of us wanted to bring children into what was becoming a very dangerous world. For a while there it looked as though it would never end and they were never going away. And this was a big problem for the Western Empire. If people stopped having children then who would fight their wars for them come the next generation, or the one that followed them? The West was already in decline and then the same thing started happening all over the world. People just stopped wanting to have children. Many more simply could not afford to. So more people were dying in the wars and of natural causes and fewer people were being born.’
‘Exactly what happened to the Roman Empire,’ George said to himself. ‘And that cost six billion lives?’
’No,’ the virus did most of that work. ‘Edgar insisted. ‘A growing number of women started to find out they were unable to conceive. Either they were infertile or the men were. Some blamed evolution, others blamed modern science and the way they modified food and water to preserve it. Remember George, seven billion people is a lot of mouths to feed. Human beings were ruining planet earth. Governments of their day and the decisions they made led to climate change. More hurricanes, tsunami waves and typhoons killed hundreds of millions of people. The war went on for nearly twenty years and that killed hundreds of millions more. Then, of course, billions of people grew old and died of natural causes whilst the younger generations were finding it increasingly hard to conceive. It was a hell of a mess. It was a frightening time George, the Human Race was dying out. That’s why nobody talks about it these days. The Corporation finally stepped in and after that well, everything began improving. Almost immediately.’
