Maggot Moon (14 page)

The moon man nodded then started to write again on the notepad. Miss Phillips looked more and more uncomfortable.

“Read it out, love,” said Gramps.

She had a good voice. Nothing of what she read would be good in any voice.

“In the beginning I believed I was involved in a genuine space mission. Then one of the scientists who had built the first prototype rocket confided in me that the belt of radiation around the moon would fry us alive. The scientist disappeared soon after. For no reason I could work out, I was sent here to Zone Seven and I realized that the scientist was right. This was the greatest hoax in the history of mankind. I asked too many questions and that’s when they silenced me. But they still needed my face. I had to escape. I took a stroll near the bottom of the wall where the bushes are wild. That was where I spotted a red football. And at the same time a boy emerged from the earth, or so it seemed. I knew the boy. The boy knew me.”

“How?” I interrupted again.

Miss Phillips translated. “I recognized him as the son of the scientist responsible for building the first prototype, the scientist who told me it was impossible to send a man to the moon.”

“Mr. Lush?” said Gramps.

The moon man nodded.

“Are they in there?” asked Gramps. “Are they all right?”

He made his hand into the shape of a gun. I don’t think any of us wanted to hear the answer that the moon man wrote down.

Miss Phillips’s voice was almost a whisper as she read out his words. “Mrs. Lush was shot the minute they arrived, in front of Mr. Lush and their son. We all witnessed it.”

“Why?” I shouted. “Why?” The question hung unanswered.

It was a slow business, what with Miss Phillips having to put all the moon man’s writing into words we could understand.

“Punishment for not cooperating.”

“What about Hector?”

I waited forever until Miss Phillips said, “They chopped off his little finger after they killed Mrs. Lush, and told Mr. Lush if he refused to do all that was asked of him another finger would go, and another.”

“Is Hector alive?”

The moon man nodded. He held up nine fingers.

“So he lost the one?”

The moon man nodded again.

Gramps almost didn’t hear the beeps coming through on the transmitter. At long last, someone, somewhere was receiving us. The beeps sounded like the heartbeat of a civilization we had feared might well be dead.

We had orders from the Obstructors to be ready to leave at eleven o’clock that evening. We were to make our way to the farthest end of Cellar Street, in the direction of the double-breasted houses.

That was when I said, “I’m not coming.”

“You have to, Standish,” said Gramps. “You can’t stay here.”

“I’m going to rescue Hector,” I said. “Throw my stone into the face of the Motherland. Show the world the moon landing is a hoax.”

“Standish,” said Gramps, “your head is full of dreams.”

So I told them my plan. I told them if I could get near the moon set then when the astronaut took his first steps I would try to break free from the other workers and stand on the moon surface in front of the cameras. I would hold up a piece of paper with the word
HOAX
written on it. Then the free world would know it was all a lie.

“What? And be shot dead?” said Gramps, his face full of storm clouds of rage.

To tell the truth, I hadn’t thought about what would happen after I held up my sign. I’d work it out then and there. That bit didn’t strike me as something you could plan. There were, as always, too many what ifs.

“If a giant can be brought down by a stone, can’t I do the same?”

“No,” said Gramps. “No. It’s a bloody stupid idea.”

Surprisingly, Miss Phillips said, “Maybe, Harry, he can get in there, do something . . .”

“And bloody well be killed into the bargain,” said Gramps. He was spitting angry. It was not all to do with my plan, of that I was sure. It had a lot to do with the Lushes and Hector. He said, “I have lost my family, my friends. I am not about to sacrifice my grandson.”

Miss Phillips put her hand on Gramps’s arm.

“Our chances of escaping are tiny,” she said. “If we are all killed then what would we have achieved? No one would ever know it was a hoax. The leaders of the free world will swallow this lie and by doing so they will make the Motherland all-powerful.”

I could see Gramps was doing his best not to listen.

“Harry,” Miss Phillips said softly, “whatever happens you will never be alone, I promise.”

I felt relieved about that. I wanted to say more.

All I managed was, “Miss Phillips is right. You will never be without me either, whether I go with you or not.”

Gramps was shaking as if an earthquake was erupting from his tummy button. Tears, the tears he said he would never cry, rolled down his face in a cascade of rage. I hugged him. I held him tight. I had the strength to do that.

He clung to me. I would remember that until the end, whatever, whenever the end might be.

He let me go, turned away, his shoulders shaking, a sob rising out of him.

Still I felt certain I could be the stone thrower.

The moon man went to Gramps and put his hand on his shoulder, to give him gravity when everything was floating away. Then he scribbled something on the notepad and handed it to Miss Phillips.

She read it out loud, slowly.

It said what Gramps didn’t want to hear. Neither did Miss Phillips. For all her courage I could see that.

“Standish is our only hope.”

I spent the rest of the afternoon with the moon man and Miss Phillips. Gramps went back upstairs. He didn’t want to hear any more. I don’t blame him. I had to, if I was ever to throw my stone.

What the moon man told me was no longer written on a notepad but scribbled into my brain. I knew exactly what was going on behind that wall. I had the map. I had the knowledge.

I return upstairs to wait with Gramps until it’s time for me to leave. Miss Phillips and the moon man stay put in Cellar Street.

Gramps has been making full-size cut-out figures. Why, I haven’t a clue. He is sitting on the floor staring at nothing, surrounded by bits of cardboard. I think it is all too much for him. Tell you this, it’s all too much for me.

I sit next to him. There are no words. His thoughts are too loud for me. I block them out by telling myself the story of what has happened up to this moment. The moment Gramps and I are sitting together on this curled-up linoleum. I take a photo of him with my mind’s eye, one I can carry with me. I am trying to see what he looked like when he was younger, before the crust of age and anxiety grew over him. His hands are big; they look like the roots of trees, well-worn, well-used. They can paint walls to fool Greenflies, make whole all that is broken. They are hands that I’m walking away from. I know what Gramps is thinking. He is wondering if he will have the strength to let me go. I’m wondering if I will have the strength to leave him.

What would happen if we sat here dead still, did nothing? Would time leave us alone, pass us by?

Bring down the curtain.

Bring up the credits.

The end.

Frick-fracking hell! That rat-a-tat-tat quick-started time, made its heart, our hearts, do a round of the racecourse. We both raise our heads. I spring to my feet. The detectives usually aren’t that polite. Knocking is something they don’t do much of. No, this is a different kettle of shit altogether. They’re checking up on us, want the blackout curtains taken down. They remind us we have to be ready to leave at six-thirty the next morning.

“Yes,” I say, hoping they haven’t spied Gramps sitting on the linoleum, his face a blank, two cardboard cutouts on the floor beside him.

I close the front door as Gramps gets slowly to his feet.

“Time,” he says. “It’s time, Standish.”

He attaches the two cut-out figures to two broken chairs. Now I see what he was up to. The silhouettes look very much like me and Gramps. He is bloody clever at things like this, always one step ahead. He knew those detectives would want to see in. It’s twilight and the flickering candles do their trick, make those cardboard cutouts look almost realistic. At least they will fool the detectives, make them think we are quietly awaiting our fate.

Just before ten o’clock we crawl across the kitchen floor towards the stairs. It occurs to me that in five hours the only words Gramps has spoken are, “Time, Standish, it’s time.”

In the bedroom that once belonged to my parents, Gramps hands me a wide belt he has made. It is to go under my clothes. On both sides in Gramps’s beautiful hand is written large and bold the word
HOAX.
Do you know, I think this is what he has been doing while I was in the cellar. The cardboard figures were an afterthought.

“I haven’t a sling to give you. This will have to do,” he says.

I don’t say what I want to say. Perhaps it’s better.

I get dressed in the rags Gramps has found for me. Rags that would embarrass a scarecrow. Gramps brings out Mum’s old makeup bag. He gently puts chalky paste on my face, darkens the sockets round my eyes, rubs mud into my hands.

When I look in that monster wardrobe mirror I see a ghost. My ghost.