Afterlight (15 page)

Valérie turned to Hannah. ‘So we did not realise how unhappy we all were.’

They stood still and silent.

Valérie clicked his tongue then rapped his knuckles on the generator’s iron casing. ‘Maybe machines like this are the first step back to bad, bad times, eh?’

The three of them stared at him, bemused by the comment.

‘I wonder,’ said Valérie, ‘do you ever think that this planet would be better off without people on it? Do you ever wonder if the oil crash happened for a reason? Just like the asteroid that finished off the dinosaurs because their time was done. Maybe it was
our
time.’

The words hung in the air, echoing off the hard rusting metal walls.

‘Uh . . . okay,’ said Nathan quietly. He pointed towards the doorway. ‘So . . . that was the generator room, anyway. Would you like to go see the tomato deck?’

He led the way out, stepping past Hannah. Valérie followed, and Jacob emerged in his wake.

‘You coming, Han?’

She looked up at him, her face ashen. ‘Is Mr Latoc right? Will the jenny-rater make everyone unhappy again?’

Jacob sighed. ‘No . . . he’s just, I dunno, exaggerating a bit. Ask Leona, she’ll tell you we weren’t all miserable.’

‘Mum always says it was better then.’

‘There you go.’

Jacob followed after Nathan and Valérie, whilst Hannah looked back once more at the dark generator room, listening to the sound of gurgling and bubbling, echoing along the feedpipes like the stomach of some large and hungry monster.

‘You coming, Han?’

‘Coming,’ she replied.

 

 

 

H
annah watched him eat breakfast. He spooned the porridge into his mouth and smiled courteously at those who were speaking to him across the table. He said little himself. His eyes drank in the details around him, but his mind seemed elsewhere, far away.

As was Hannah’s.

Mr Latoc troubled her. What Mr Latoc had
said
troubled her.

Leona urged her to eat up whilst the porridge was warm, and then continued in conversation with Rebecca, the other woman who taught classes at their school. They were heatedly discussing what sort of subjects they wanted to bring into the classroom. Leona wanted to add some complicated things like science and technology; stuff to do with machines. Rebecca, on the other hand, wanted to add more ‘farmy’ things.

She ate in silence and continued to watch Mr Latoc smiling politely at all the right times, even laughing occasionally, but just not there.

Elsewhere.

Finally, he finished his porridge and excused himself, standing up from the long table as he fiddled clumsily with his crutch and began to limp across the floor. Arnold Brown, old as the hills, offered him a steadying hand and offered to take his dirty bowl to the canteen counter for him. Mr Latoc smiled and thanked him, then shuffled towards the door of the canteen. It opened and the ladies coming in for the second breakfast sitting stepped aside and allowed him through on to the gantry outside.

Hannah hurried to finish her breakfast with three well-laden spoons, piling in one after the other until her cheeks bulged like a hamster. She almost gagged on it. She wasn’t hungry. In fact, something was gnawing away at her tummy, making her feel sick. But Leona certainly wouldn’t let her step away from the table with anything less than a scraped-clean bowl.

She stood up.

Leona stopped talking and glanced at the bowl. ‘That was quick.’

Hannah nodded and smiled as she worked the porridge down.

‘You all right there, honey?’

‘Yes,’ she managed finally. ‘Want to go play for a bit before school.’

‘Okay, but class starts in half an hour.’

Hannah nodded.

‘And only inside or on the tomato deck. The wind’s up today.’

‘Okay,’ she replied, scooping up her bowl from the table.

She walked over and placed it on the washing-up counter, then hurriedly stepped out through the canteen door onto the gantry. The wind tossed her blonde hair in all directions, stinging her cheeks with one or two spits of rain.

She saw him standing at the far corner, leaning on the safety rail and looking down on the decks below. Right now it was a hive of activity as people emerged from all corners to head up to the canteen for breakfast or in different directions for their morning chores.

She approached him warily, the wind teasing his long dark hair as well. The rumple of wind covered the soft clank of her sandals on the metal grating. She was standing right beside him before he seemed to notice and turn his gaze from the decks below towards her.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘hello, Hannah, I did not see you there.’

Hannah didn’t do ‘good mornings’, ‘how are you doing today’, ‘it’s blowing lively this morning, isn’t it.’ Those were the kind of boring openers she let adults waste their time on. She had something far more pressing to deal with; something she’d been stewing on all night.

‘Is Walter’s jenny-rater really a very bad thing?’

He seemed taken aback by so direct a comment out of the blue. But after a moment, seemingly recalling his tour from yesterday, he nodded slowly. He lowered himself down, squatting so that his face was more on a level with hers, grimacing with pain as he did so.

‘How much do you know about the times
before
?’

Her eyes rolled up to the sky as she attempted to retrieve some of the many potted descriptions she’d been fed over the years. ‘Leona said those were fun times. But Nanna says things weren’t so good. That most people pretended to be happy, but weren’t.’

‘Your grandmother is right. Even I did not see this back then. I pretended to be happy like everyone else. We had our cars, our gadgets, our internet, our shopping malls. And the nights glowed with neon signs, telling us to buy even more things, to wear more things, to eat more things. But I am sure now few of us were happy.’

‘Why?’

‘I think . . . because deep down, we knew it was wrong. I know now there was a . . . a voice, a quiet voice telling me that bad things were coming. That the food we were eating was poisoning us. That the electricity we were using, the materials we dug out of the ground, were not going to last for ever. That there were too many of us being much too greedy.’

Hannah thought she understood that quiet voice. There were times she’d been naughty, doing something she knew she shouldn’t be doing, and not even enjoying it, because that annoying little voice was telling her there’d be hell to pay when Leona or Nanna found out.

‘I think there were some who sensed that a . . .’ Valérie looked around for the right word, ‘that a
storm
was coming. And that storm would kill many people.’

‘A storm,’ she echoed quietly.

‘But we did not stop or change our ways.’ He looked sad. ‘We were like caterpillars.’

‘Caterpillars?’

Valérie nodded. ‘A type of caterpillar that eats much too much. I remember reading about them - they are a species that live in some jungle. They eat and eat these green leaves, and then, when the leaves have all gone, they will just eat each other until only one of them is left on the plant.’

‘Oh.’ Her favourite picture-book in the classroom’s small library was
The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
She wondered whether she might start seeing that story differently.

‘God made such a beautiful world, Hannah. Then he put us on it and all we have done is destroy it. We have suck it dry of valuable resources and in turn fill it with useless things we do not need. We turn a beautiful thing into an ugly thing.’

Hannah looked down at the decks below; rusting, cluttered and messy. He was right.

‘I feel this now, that the crash was like a judgement on us. Out there I have seen nothing but darkness and evil left behind, Hannah.’ He smiled. ‘But here, in
this
place, maybe I see goodness for the first time, in a long time. I see hope.’ He looked out across the rigs, pushing dark hair from his eyes. ‘This is a special place your grandmother has created; like an Eden. But . . . yes, the generator, it worries me.’

‘Why?’

‘Your friend, Nathan and your brother, Jacob?’

‘He’s my uncle.’

Valérie shrugged. ‘They, and Walter and others will want more electricity soon. And they will want other things, more and more things. And so I think we will head back to the way we once were. We will not learn.’

Hannah’s eyebrows furrowed as she thought about that.

‘Your grandmother, I think, sees that the past was very bad times,’ he continued, ‘and that is good. She is a clever woman. But, I wonder if she sees that the generator is
not
a good thing; the first step back towards the bad times.’

‘The bad time before the crash?’

‘Yes. Perhaps life is better here just as it is? You see that, yes?’

Hannah could hear the wisdom in his voice, even if she didn’t entirely follow the logic. The jenny-rater rooms did in truth smell awful, and all that smell and hard work just to make a few light-bulbs glow? They had candles for that. She’d heard Leona and Jacob go on about the old world so much. Hannah often wondered what was really so bad about this world? The last time she’d actually felt genuinely sad was ages ago - when she’d accidentally lost a doll over the side and watched it tumbling in the wind all the way down into the sea, making hardly a splash.

And Nanna said the same things as Mr Latoc. It sounded like people spent so much time being unhappy in the old days. Sad, and angry too, because they didn’t have the same shiny things as someone else had.

‘I think it is a mistake.’

She sensed Mr Latoc was somehow disappointed in them, as if he’d hoped they were better people than they’d actually turned out to be. That thought burned her - like a telling-off.

It’s the jenny-rater’s fault.
That’s what was letting them down, that’s what really disappointed Mr Latoc. She wondered if that meant he was thinking of leaving them as soon as his leg was all fixed up, go and find better people to live with; people who could live quite happily without silly ‘lectric. She’d hate for him to go, especially after she’d worked so hard to make him better again. He seemed to be the only grown-up who really listened to her. When he talked to her, he actually looked at her. Other grown-ups always seemed to have their attention elsewhere, on things-that-needed-doing, they gave her an uh-huh, or a really?-
that’snice.

But Mr Latoc really listened; listened with his eyes as well as his ears.

He was looking at her now. He reached out and gently held Hannah’s shoulder. ‘You are crying. I am sorry. I think I have upset you?’

Hannah shook her head. ‘Are you going to leave us?’

He shrugged. ‘I . . . I see things I would want to change if—’

They heard the faint sound of a bell ringing out across the platforms.

‘You have school now?’

Hannah nodded absent-mindedly, her face clouded and deep in thought.

‘You should go. Before you are late and get me in trouble.’

‘You won’t go, will you? I can ask Uncle Walter not to put the jenny-rater on tonight, if you don’t go.’

His smile was warm as he gently squeezed her shoulder. ‘I do not think I am leaving today, Hannah.’

 

Jenny admired Martha’s handiwork in the mirror.

‘Oh, blimey! I can’t believe what a difference it makes!’

Martha beamed cheerfully, scissors in one hand, comb in the other. ‘I told you, Jenny. Didn’t I say? It’s the length that ages you. I been tellin’ you that since I don’t know.’

She studied her image in the mirror. Her hair, long and coarse and frizzy, had been tamed by Martha’s hand into something she could be proud of. Instead of carelessly pulled back into a ponytail - out of sight, out of mind - it now framed and flattered her face.

‘A little conditioner, and a trim . . . you look flippin’ gorgeous now, sister!’

Martha’s enthusiasm was infectious. Jenny found herself borrowing some of that smile for herself.

‘It does make me look . . . yes, younger.’

She realised she looked a lot more like the old Jenny, the long-forgotten Jenny who once wore pencil skirts to work and looked good for thirty-nine with a little warpaint.

‘Oooh, he’ll love it, girl. He’ll be all over you like a bloody rash.’

Her cheeks coloured ever so slightly. ‘What?’

‘Oh, come on, Jenny. You know who I mean.’

‘No . . . I—’

‘Our newcomer?’ Martha grinned in the mirror. ‘Monsieur Tasty?’

Jenny’s jaw dropped. ‘You think I got you to cut my hair
for
him?’ Martha’s raucous laugh filled the cabin. ‘Oh-my-days! Of course you did, love! It’s obvious you like him. Lord knows, we
all
know you’re goin’ to let him stay.’

Jenny was appalled that they actually thought she’d put her own desires before the good of the community; that she’d let her loins do the thinking.

She shook the thought out of her head. ‘Look, Martha, no.’

Martha cocked a sceptical eyebrow at Jenny.

‘Seriously, no,’ said Jenny. ‘If he stays, it’s because he can add something; knowledge, a skill set, a useful pair of hands, whatever. And that’s the only reason.’

‘Be nice though, to have a man ‘round who ain’t either some old goat or a young boy,’ laughed Martha, her broad frame shaking. She sighed. ‘A
real man
at last. Perhaps I’ll get a bit of the real t’ing between my legs instead of me trusty ol’ faithful.’

‘Oh, Martha!’

‘See, the batteries have been flat for years. I have to shake the thing like a salt cellar.’ Martha cackled again.