Afterlight (11 page)

‘I wandered,’ he said. ‘I stayed away from cities and towns and prayed like crazy I get through this nightmare. After many months I found some good people who took me in.’ His eyes drifted off her, down to the steaming bowl of soup in front of him. ‘Good people who let me - a stranger - join them during the time when
charognard
meant danger. You understand what I mean, yes? The people who take your food?’

‘Scavengers,’ said Jenny, nodding.

‘Yes,
scavengers.
On the continent there were many,
many . . .
perhaps even still.’

She had hoped that those desperate people content to endlessly drift and live off what could still be foraged from mouldering shops would surely be scarce now. Isolated loners, unbalanced, dangerous and best avoided. What she’d been hoping to hear was that the only people alive now were communities likes theirs, people like themselves knuckling down to the business of making-do.

‘I lived with these people for seven years. Then strangers came.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Men and guns.’ The expression on his face told her more than his fading words. ‘They came. Smoke brought them . . . they came for food, but then they wanted much more,’ he said.

Jenny felt her heart race, memories of a winter morning.

‘Children, women,’ Valérie shook his head, his voice failing for a moment. ‘They,’ he took a deep breath, ‘they shoot the men first. The others, they
play
with.’ He looked up at her. ‘You understand?’

‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘But you . . . ?’

‘How come they did not shoot me?’

That was her question.

He dropped his gaze, clearly ashamed. ‘I hid and saw these things. Then I ran away.’ He placed his spoon back in the bowl and pushed the bowl away; his appetite understandably seemed to have gone. He dropped his head and a moment later Jenny realised from the subtle heave of his shoulders that he was crying.

She reached across the table and rested a hand on his forearm. ‘It’s okay, Mr Latoc.’

He raised his face, cheeks glistening with tears. ‘I did nothing . . . I was frightened. I ran.’ He shook his head angrily. ‘I did nothing.’

‘There isn’t much you can do,’ said Jenny softly, ‘not against armed men. It’s just the way it is. That’s why we stay out here.’

He accepted that with a hasty nod.

‘So what happened after that?’

‘I ran. I keep moving.’ He composed himself, wiped the tears from his face and took a deep breath. ‘I went south-east for some time, towards the Mediterranean.’

‘Tell me, is it as bad over there?’

His eyes met hers. ‘Yes. I will tell you . . . I saw tanks, some burned. Many abandoned tanks.’

‘Did you say
tanks
?’ cut in Walter.

‘Yes. Russian ones.’

‘My God! You remember, Jenny?’ said Walter. ‘Remember the rumours we kept hearing on the radio a few years after?’

She nodded. They’d heard garbled reports of short and frantic wars in Asia; resource grabs around the Caspian and several months of fighting in Kazakhstan. ‘Let him continue, Walter.’

‘I travel down to Croatia. And then I find a sailing boat in Rijeka. I know a little sailing so I went across Adriatic, along the Italian coast. It is all much like the UK, some small communities making food. But small, you understand? Several dozen, no more. But one group tell me that they hear Britain survived much better. That they have built these big
safe zones.
So then I sail to Montpellier, and I cross France. Head north up to Calais.’

‘Why not just sail around?’

He shrugged. ‘I am not so confident with a boat - not to go out of the Mediterranean into rough sea.’ He grimaced like a naughty child. ‘I cannot swim. So, I go through France instead. And then I find another boat at Calais. I sailed across the Channel this last summer. To Dover. I walk towards London hoping to find one of these safe places. Order, you know?’

She nodded sympathetically.

He scratched at his thick dark beard. ‘But I soon see that this country is no better; just like Belgium, like France. Empty towns, burned homes, abandoned car and trucks.’

She leant forward, almost tempted to reach out and comfort him. ‘Tell me, did you see
any
signs of rebuilding going on? Did you see anything like that?’

He shook his head. ‘I saw . . . very little. Smoke a few times. I saw horse . . .’ he looked up at Walter standing just behind him.

‘Shit?’

‘Oui, horse shit, on some roads. You know? There are some people, like yours, surviving. But nowhere as big as this place.’

‘And no lights?’

He shook his head. ‘I saw no lights. There were no safe zones.’

There was a sombre stirring amongst the crowd gathered behind Jenny. A long silence punctuated by the soft rumple and languid thump of the sea below, and the steady patter of rain on the plexiglass windows of the mess.

‘Those men that were after you at the harbour,’ said Jenny after a while, ‘why did they want you dead?’

He shrugged. ‘I do not know.’

‘There must have been a reason, Mr Latoc.’

‘Really?’ He glanced up at her, his tired voice pulled taut with irritation. ‘I have come across too many men who kill you for a . . . for a fresh egg . . . or a rusty tin of food. Or just because you are a stranger to them, look different. Or because for fun.’

‘I want you to tell me what that was about,’ she insisted, feeling the slightest pang of guilt for pressing him.

‘Okay, so, I found a settlement. They let me stay for a while. But then . . .’ He looked up at the sea of faces standing behind Jenny. Eyes judging him silently, waiting for him to give them a reason to ask him to leave.

‘Please go on,’ urged Jenny.

‘But then a woman was . . . was killed.’ He lowered his voice slightly. ‘You understand before she was killed she was . . .’ He paused and Jenny knew he was omitting the word
raped
. She nodded silently. ‘Go on.’

‘They pull me out of my bed at night and did a . . . a
trial
. They decided I am guilty—’

‘Why would they do that?’

He shook his head, genuinely exasperated. ‘Why do you think?’ He laughed. ‘Maybe it is because I support the wrong football team, uh?’

Jenny acknowledged the naivety in her question. The dark ringlets of his hair and a black beard long enough to lose a fist in reminded her vaguely of the sort of firebrand mullahs who once preached outside the overcrowded mosques in Shepherd’s Bush. She could easily imagine how that made him a target.

‘They take me in a truck, away to be killed. To the town where your people found me . . . to Beckton?’

‘Bracton.’

‘Yes. The men said if I manage to get to the water and jump in and start swimming back to
Paki-land
, they will let me live.’ Valérie sighed. ‘I tell them I am actually Belgian. But do they listen to that? Of course not.’

‘Mum,’ called out Jacob. He was standing at the back of the small crowd. He squeezed his way forward until he was standing beside Walter. ‘Mum, it was just like he said. Those men were hunting him, you know? Like it was a sort of game.’

Valérie nodded; he recognised Jacob from the quayside and offered him a hesitant smile. ‘Hunting, yes . . . I suppose. Like your fox and hounds hunting.’

Jacob nodded. ‘Yeah . . . that’s what it looked like.’

‘I would be dead now,’ Valérie added, looking up at Jacob and Walter, ‘if not for you. Thank you.’

Walter shrugged. ‘That’s okay.’

It was quiet for a moment, save for several whispered exchanges amongst the crowd.

‘So,’ Jenny sighed, ‘that’s how it still is, then.’ She was tempted to turn around and say
I told you so
. To direct that at Alice and her small circle of nay-sayers. Even to direct that at her own son, who seemed so certain the world was putting itself back together without him. She could have scored some cheap and easy points saying those things right now. Instead she shrugged. Valérie Latoc’s story argued her point - that the world beyond their little island was still a dangerous place.

‘I . . . I would very much like to stay here,’ said Valérie. His voice strained and stretched, the voice of a man not too proud to plead. ‘I do not want to go back. I have seen enough of . . . of . . .’ A pitiful tear rolled down his sallow cheek and lost itself in the dark thatch of bristles. ‘Please . . .’

Jenny found herself reaching across the table again and gently patted his thin forearm. The gesture seemed to weaken his resolve and more tears rolled down into his thick beard.

‘Okay,’ muttered Jenny. ‘Okay, that’s enough for now.’

‘Please may I stay?’ he asked.

Jenny glanced back over her shoulder, keen to get a feel for what the others felt. She could see eyes that regarded him with pity, eyes red-rimmed with sympathetic tears. Heads that silently nodded their approval at her.

She turned back to look at him. ‘We’ll see, Valérie. You can stay for a while, whilst I give it some thought.’

‘For a while?’

‘A probationary period. We’ll see how things go, okay?’

His face crumpled. ‘Oh, thank you!’ he sobbed, grasping her hand. ‘Thank you!’

She smiled awkwardly and pulled her hand back. ‘All right.’ She turned around in her seat. ‘Right, the show’s over, folks. We’re done here.’

Walter clapped his hands together. ‘Come on then, ladies and gents! Come on! You heard her, jobs to go to!’

 

‘You like him,’ said Leona softly, ‘don’t you?’

Jenny turned on her side to face Leona across the narrow floor space, the cot’s springs squeaking noisily beneath her. She could hear Hannah’s even breathing in the darkness, coming from the other end of Leona’s cot.

‘I suppose I feel sorry for him.’

Despite her initial knee-jerk reaction at the first sight of him, the poor man didn’t seem to have either the masculine swagger of a predatory male nor the dangerous glassy-eyed stare of a nutcase. He seemed beaten, tired, dispirited . . . perhaps even broken. Years of travelling, he’d told them, years of bearing witness to what was left: the ruined shell of the old oil world had taken its toll on him.

Jenny could only imagine how much worse conditions must be on the continent. She’d been hoping he had a more heartening tale to tell but deep down she’d always suspected it was every bit as bad as he’d described.

She’d seen some awful things over the last ten years; once, the blackened and twisted carcass of someone tied to a stake in the middle of the ash-grey mound of a bonfire; someone she could only hope had been dead long before being burned. Once, a row of desiccated corpses lined up along the bottom of a wall riddled with bullet holes. Perhaps they’d been looters shot by soldiers or an armed police unit.

She could only imagine what other sights this poor man could add to that. Many more, no doubt.

She realised that there were also a few selfish reasons to let the man stay. Perhaps Valérie Latoc might be someone that Jacob would actually
listen
to. Perhaps in time the man would be ready to talk about what he’d witnessed in greater detail and maybe, just maybe, that would be enough to convince Jacob that there was nothing out there but empty towns disappearing beneath spreading weeds . . . and dangerous, armed people.

‘You going to let him join us, Mum? We could do with a few more men here who, you know,
aren’t
old age pensioners.’

‘We’ll see, Lee.’

Mr Latoc had been found a space out on the drilling platform. Howard and Dennis lived over there. David Cudmore and Alice Harton - who were a couple, she was almost certain of that - and Kevin whom they seemed to have adopted between them. The Barker sisters bunked there, all four of them very quiet and introspective. She suspected they held prayer meetings, but at least it was kept over there and in private. Mrs Panhwar, her mother and her two daughters, they spoke a little English - the daughters doing a better job at picking it up. The drilling platform was as good a place as any for the man to find peace and quiet and recover.

He could remain on probation until the anniversary celebration was out of the way, and then she’d have to make a decision. She smiled. The celebration party was just a week away and exactly what they needed after hearing Mr Latoc’s depressing account. There’d been some silly rumours going around over the last year, that a UN force had landed on the south coast of England and was even now organising a major humanitarian effort. A silly rumour that had found traction because one of the women was picking up intermittent signals in Spanish on long wave on one of their wind-up radios. And, of course, there’d been that supposed sighting of a vapour trail in the sky last spring by one of the children. Things like that made everyone feel unsettled; made people want to put down their tools, forget their work assignments and go rushing ashore.

Valérie’s words seemed to have completely scotched those hopeful rumours. Shot them down in the most brutal way. Jenny had felt her heart sinking just like everyone else as he’d told his story.

The party at least was something for them to look forward to; a celebration of Walter’s wonderful methane-powered generator, a reminder that despite all the hard work, the cold winter nights, the monotonous diet, the discomfort, the damp, the wind, the rain . . . they were very lucky. That they were safe, and that slowly, little by little, things would get better again.

‘He seemed really nice, in a sad kind of way,’ uttered Leona.

Jenny sighed. ‘I’ll decide
after
the party. Anyway, get some sleep, Lee. Don’t forget you’re on morning-chickens tomorrow.’

‘Oh, wonderful,’ Leona huffed, and turned over noisily in her cot.