Cold Earth, page 17
‘Dinner, for that matter,’ said Nina. ‘Salads and roast vegetables and fruit. Ripe melons and oranges. Lychees.’
‘Doesn’t sound very local and seasonal,’ said Catriona. ‘Right, about the world ending. In our lifetimes. I was saying, I think I’m starting to believe it. Though I did when I was very little. I used to keep my Flower Fairies umbrella under my bed because I’d seen a pamphlet that said when the fifteen-minute warning went you were meant to do something with a golf umbrella.’
‘A golf umbrella?’ asked Ben.
‘You were supposed to remove the nearest door from its hinges and prop it at a forty-five degree angle,’ said Nina. ‘I don’t think it had to be a golf umbrella. Then you were meant to get under it, preferably with a supply of milk and water wrapped in kitchen foil, and await the arrival of the emergency services. You’d think if they thought kitchen foil could repel radiation they’d tell you to wrap yourself in it, not the milk. It was probably just meant to keep people busy removing doors and stop them rushing into the streets to panic or have sex or whatever Thatcher thought people might want to do in their last fifteen minutes. Though I don’t know how everyone was meant to know, anyway. It’s not as if they had air-raid sirens. By the way, there’s ice by the river.’
‘Already?’ said Yianni. ‘It’s been a warm summer.’
‘Look for yourself, then.’
‘I didn’t mean I don’t believe you.’
‘Why not?’ she said. ‘If I see imaginary Greenlanders, why not ice?’
‘Were you scared about nuclear war, Nina? When you were little?’ Catriona put her hand on Nina’s arm.
‘Too much to think about it,’ said Nina. ‘We had a copy of When the Wind Blows. It looked like a children’s book. Like the Father Christmas one. I couldn’t understand how the grown-ups could carry on going to work and cooking and putting us to bed when that was going to happen. Mum used to say that if things started to look bad she’d take us all to New Zealand, which she seemed to think would somehow escape nuclear holocaust. But it takes more than fifteen minutes.’
‘My dad used to say we’d go and stay with the cousins in Skye,’ said Catriona. ‘But I thought the same thing. Being twenty miles off shore isn’t much help in a nuclear holocaust.’
‘I can’t remember worrying,’ said Ben. ‘My dad probably reckoned that if it happened, it happened, and nowt he could do about it.’
I can’t remember knowing anything about nuclear bombs until my teens. Is that right? I certainly don’t remember being scared of anything except the Lavens’ dogs and that Dad might die in a car crash like Will Johnson’s dad. It sounded like things I’ve read about kids growing up in war zones.
‘And you were ordinary kids in ordinary families? Your parents weren’t radical activists or anything?’
Nina shrugged. ‘Left-wing and politically aware. Like most academics. At least in the UK.’
‘Not activists,’ said Catriona. ‘Mum kept talking about going to Greenham Common but she never did. I think it was more about being frustrated at home than feeling any urgent need to ban the bomb.’
‘I think it was like that for a lot of women who did go. Wasn’t the point that patriarchy was a wicked giant which imprisoned women at home with the kids with one hand and toted nuclear bombs around on motorways with the other?’ said Nina. ‘My mum took me for a few half-terms. The songs were good. But it’s not very nice being six and knowing that you’re someone’s prison. And they wouldn’t have my brother at all. Even if you’re four, if you’ve got a penis you’re the enemy. Men are irredeemable. Talk about biological determinism.’
‘Greenham?’ I asked. This British elision. Green’am. You know the ‘h’ is there but you don’t say it. Green eggs and ham.
‘Greenham Common,’ said Nina. ‘It was a protest camp. And a commune. Women only. Around an American military base. Mostly about nuclear weapons but, you can imagine, lots of other things as well.’
‘I thought the UK welcomed the postwar American military presence?’ said Ruth.
Nina looked at her. ‘No one ever welcomes an American military presence.’
Ruth pushed her hair back. ‘I’d say the people in the concentration camps probably did. Wouldn’t you?’
Nina stood up. ‘I’d say they might have welcomed it more earlier. I’m cold. I’m going to bed. Good night.’
‘Sleep well,’ said Catriona.
‘Please,’ added Ruth.
‘Yes,’ said Yianni. ‘You should all get to bed. I’ve got some notes to write up.’
*
She didn’t sleep well. She never does. When the nightmares started, I felt sorry for her. It was like when Hannah had her sleepwalking phase; it was fear like I’d never seen before and the fact that I couldn’t see what justified it didn’t seem relevant. But at least Hannah didn’t come over all supercilious when the rest of us couldn’t see the Dark Bears, and didn’t expect us to tiptoe round them in the day. I guess after the three of us you know this better than I do, but after a while you get to resent the broken nights. Nina’s not a child. We didn’t sign up to be carers. And I know what you’re thinking, you didn’t raise me to turn away from the needy and the sick, I am my sister’s keeper, but it’s hard when the sick person is also given to unpleasantness. I was deep in warm sleep, dreaming that the five of us were gathered around the table. Grandma’s red check cloth was there, before Holly spilt the ink, and Hannah was in her high chair, waving that Mickey Mouse spoon. Before the girls started to grow up. When you two would suddenly smile across the plates like you had a private joke. There was snow in the yard but we were warm, and then suddenly I was cold and my lower back hurt and someone was muttering outside in the dark.
I pressed my face into my sleeping bag and whispered through closed teeth. ‘Oh, shut up and go to sleep.’
Then I sat up.
‘Nina? You OK?’
‘It’s out there,’ she said. ‘Right by your tent.’
Then there was more muttering, sounding close. My scalp crinkled.
‘Nina? That’s you, right?’
‘You mean you can hear him too?’
She sounded excited. I listened for a minute.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I heard you. Get some sleep, OK?’ I remembered what Mom used to say. ‘Morning comes faster when you sleep.’
‘I thought you heard it. I thought it wasn’t just me.’
‘Go to sleep,’ I said.
I lay down again, and again heard the voice. I’m so reluctant to say this, but it didn’t really sound like Nina, and it did, honestly, sound as if it were coming from between my tent and hers. I couldn’t hear words, only a low chunter. Something – someone – reciting a grievance, maybe even a prayer. It could have been someone talking in their sleep, maybe Ruth or Ben. God knows Ruth has reason to – she lost her boyfriend in a road accident last year. It’s too easy to get scared when there’s no light and someone telling ghost stories in the next tent. I pulled my hood close round my ears and began my own whispering. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber. I’m all right here, OK? The words for this are banal, but I think I’m beginning to understand some of the things I’ve always heard. If we are all held in God’s love, then maybe in the end it doesn’t matter all that much if we meet again in Deer Creek or in the sweet hereafter. I feel as if I’m already on the way, here, so far away. I know the point is that, if love survives death, the worst is not terrible. Painful, but not terrible. If. When it feels as if the end might be soon, it can be hard to hold onto that moment of certainty.
I woke to the purr of the paraffin stove and the rustling of bags. There was grey light, not enough to see colour in my tent, but enough to get up. Enough to start the last day here. I opened the flaps. Yianni was tipping dried fruit into the pan, his breath hanging in the half-light, and Catriona was sitting hunched in the entrance to her tent, fully dressed but silent. She wears a striped knitted hat with earflaps and fancy strings that hang down like Native American braids.
‘What’s up?’ I asked.
Yianni glanced up. Catriona rested her forehead on her knees.
‘What?’
‘I made Yianni try the phone.’ Her voice was muffled.
‘There’s no connection.’
‘What?’
‘We’re completely cut off.’ Her face lifted and she began to laugh as tears trickled down her cheeks. ‘We can’t make contact. We’re stranded. We haven’t even got much food left.’
She sniffed and put her head back down.
I looked at Yianni.
‘Really?’
He shrugged, pointlessly stirring the fruit in the water. ‘I’ll try again. We’ll have another go at the computer.’ He looked up. ‘We’re not stranded, Catriona. They’ll come. They know we’re here. They’ll come for us. Maybe they’ll even come early when they don’t get our call.’
‘Or maybe they’re all dead,’ she said. ‘Maybe there’s no one left to come for us.’
Yianni looked towards Nina’s tent, reached over and shook Catriona’s shoulder. He wasn’t gentle. Her head swayed against her knees.
‘Stop that. Shut up. I don’t want Nina to hear this, OK? If you can’t keep quiet, go away. We have to protect Nina.’
I reached in and unzipped my bag and came out in socks and the layers I wear to sleep. It was too cold. I crouched next to Catriona and put my arm round her.
‘Nina’s not the only person on this dig,’ I said to Yianni. ‘Other people get to cry as well. Hey, Catriona. Come on. We’ll be OK. Maybe the phone never worked, have you thought of that? We never tried it before, did we? Even if lots of people are sick, the satellite wouldn’t fall out of the sky. Satellites don’t get viruses. Come on, we’ll get everything ready, and tomorrow that plane will come. In forty-eight hours you’re going to be home with your family, eating whatever you want, taking a hot bath, calling your friends. We’re all going to be OK.’
She put her head on my shoulder.
‘I’m so scared. What if this is it?’
‘This isn’t it. This is a phone that didn’t work. It’s not the end of the world.’
‘But it might be. We’ve no way of knowing. Things wouldn’t look any different. If everyone’s died.’
I rubbed her shoulder. ‘They wouldn’t look any different if your Mom’s making up your bed and getting the ingredients for your favourite meal and the pilot is thinking he hasn’t got our call and maybe he’ll come out first thing just to check up.’
Yianni took the pan off the stove and turned the valve. Silence, again. Nina’s tent opened and she looked out.
‘You don’t have to protect me. I’m not stupid. I heard you trying the phone.’
She came out. We’ve all lost some weight but she is really thin now, which is odd considering how much time she spends in her tent reading while the rest of us dig.
‘There’s nothing we can do, you know,’ she said. ‘I don’t think Jim’s right about it all being OK but we might as well pretend he is. Think about it, Cat, there’s going to be plenty of time to panic later.’ She turned to me. ‘Jim, you heard him, didn’t you? In the night? He woke you up.’
I looked at her, so gaunt and eager. Even her hair looks thinner and duller than it did. If. If things don’t go well. Well, I’ll just say Nina’s got nothing to spare.
‘I thought I heard a voice,’ I said. ‘But Nina, it was the middle of the night. People talk in their sleep. Come on, we’ll be out of here tomorrow. You can get some help, huh?’
‘I don’t need help,’ she said. ‘I just need to go home. If you think people who communicate with invisible presences and see the dead rise and walk the earth need help, you’re ahead of me in the queue.’
I breathed in slowly and counted five as I breathed out. She’s sick and she’s scared and she has no experience of faith.
‘Come on,’ said Yianni. ‘Let’s eat. There’s a lot to do today. Ben? Ruth?’
‘Coming,’ said Ben.
‘With you in a minute,’ said Ruth. ‘Nina, that was so uncalled for.’
‘Enough,’ said Yianni. ‘Breakfast. We need to make the most of the light.’
He passed around plates. Ben and Ruth came and sat down, and I noticed that Ruth wasn’t even wearing lipstick. She’s always pretty, but she looked drawn and pale. I guess we all do. I haven’t seen my own reflection since I used the men’s room in the community centre when we picked up the horses, but my clothes are getting a little big. Our diet hasn’t been optimal. I can spend a lot of time thinking about what I want to eat – hamburgers from the barbecue with ketchup and mustard and pickles and all the salt and spices that don’t earn their weight here – but mostly I’d just be glad to see you all again.
‘So,’ said Ben. ‘What are you all going to do on Saturday? I’m going to lie in, then phone all my friends and go out for a real American brunch. Pancakes, bacon, sausages, syrup. Juice. Real coffee. What’ve you got planned?’
I watched Catriona trying to push a prune through the hole in an apple ring with her spoon. I could have eaten what she didn’t want, no problems.
‘Saturday,’ said Nina. ‘We could try to catch some fish. I suppose there’s no way of getting a goose.’
Yianni put his plate down and stood up. We all sat quite still as he took three steps towards Nina, grabbed her wrist in one hand, drew the other back behind his shoulder and brought it hard onto her face. The slap thudded across the damp air and she cried out. He looked down at her for a moment and then walked off up the hill. She put her hand to her face and looked round at us.
‘Hey, Yianni –’ I said. Hey what? Don’t hit girls? Come back here?
‘You deserved that,’ Ruth told Nina. ‘You were being deliberately provocative. I’ll go.’
She got up and followed Yianni, who was already halfway to the hall.
‘Don’t start a fight,’ Ben said to me.
Nina was still sitting there. Her eyes filled.
Catriona put her arm round her. ‘I’m sorry. I was just so shocked. We should have done something.’
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I was closest. I should have grabbed him. I just didn’t think he would do that.’
I put my plate down, not so hungry after all. We’re all under stress but you’d hope it would take longer to start the Lord of the Flies stuff. Nina still hadn’t spoken. Catriona patted her.
‘He’ll come back and apologise,’ she said. ‘I suppose he’s just so anxious.’
‘We’re all anxious,’ said Ben. ‘But Jesus. Are you OK? Do you want some cold water on that?’
Nina shook her head, pushed Catriona away and stumbled back into her tent. The zippers scratched closed and then there was silence.
‘What’s she doing?’ I mouthed to Ben.
He shrugged and mimed someone opening a book.
Catriona sat down again. She tried to poke the end of her shoelace back through one of the eyelets in her boot but her hand was shaking too much.
‘Catriona, it’s OK,’ I said. ‘He lost his temper. It’s bad but it doesn’t affect our getting home. It’s OK.’
She looked up. ‘It’s criminal, apart from anything else. It’s assault.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘If Nina wants to take things further when we get back, she can. But for now, let’s just get through the day.’
I sat down. The next thing to do, I guessed, was to pick up the plates. Someone was going to need to go after Yianni and Ruth and bring about some kind of reconciliation, at least between Yianni and Nina, failing which I guessed we’d have to keep Nina on some kind of watch until the plane came. She needs Yianni. He’s been the only one she’ll talk to, some days. And then we needed to make sure all the finds were properly packed and labelled, take down everything we didn’t need overnight and pick over the site for every sign of our lives here. I wanted to go back to bed and sleep, or at least lie quietly on my own, until I heard the engine. My bones felt too heavy and my back still ached from sleeping on the ground.
‘We should clear up,’ said Catriona. ‘I suppose no one wants any more breakfast.’
Ben was eating again.
‘We can’t throw food away,’ he said. ‘There isn’t enough left. They’ll be hungry way before lunch.’
Catriona turned her spoon over and over. ‘How much food is left, exactly, do you know?’
I stood up. I knew I’d feel better once I got going. You forget, don’t you, how tired you are, until you stop again.
‘No,’ I said. ‘And for now, all we have to do is pack it, OK? No inventories. We’re on that plane in the morning.’
She rolled the spoon back the other way. ‘Can we have one more go at the computer? And the phone?’
‘It’s Yianni’s computer,’ I said. ‘I don’t know where the phone is. I’m sure he’ll try it again. Come on, let’s at least put the stove away.’
‘I’m so tired,’ said Catriona, not moving.
‘Me too,’ said Ben. ‘But he’s right. We’ll look really stupid if the plane comes and we didn’t get ready because we thought the world had ended. Try explaining that to the ESRC.’
The Economics and Social Sciences Research Council, who are funding most of the dig. UK taxpayers’ money for Greenlandic archaeology. I stood and picked up the stove, which was painfully cold to touch. Ben held out his hands and hauled Catriona to her feet. She went and stood outside Nina’s tent. No sound, not even the rustle of a page or a sleeping bag. I shook my head at her and she shrugged. When the plates were arranged in the stores tent and everything else put away she went back.
‘Nina? We’re going up the hill. But we’ll be down soon, OK? We’ll bring Yianni.’
Silence.
‘Nina? Are you all right in there?’
‘Go away,’ said Nina.
