The End of the World Running Club (35 page)

Rupert had found us some clothes to wear while ours dried by his stove. He had given us a small candlelit tour of the house as he searched for them (avoiding one closed door without comment which I assumed led into the drawing room where he had shot his unwanted guest). I have no idea how many lives had passed through this house over the centuries, but many of them seemed to have been remembered by their wardrobes, most of which were still filled with ancient dresses, suits, robes, uniforms and shoes. In one small cupboard was a line of green school uniforms, identical apart from their size, which grew from left to right along the rail.

My outfit was found in a small bedroom at the end of the upstairs corridor littered with books and papers. He’d selected a pair of thick woollen trousers, a matching jacket and an off-white shirt with cuffs that were still crumpled from having been rolled up to the elbows. He had also very carefully chosen a pair of brown Y-fronts and long tennis socks from a drawer next to the cupboard, and a pair of brown brogues from the beneath the bed.

I got dressed in the near dark. The difference between my age and that of the clothes could have been described in wars and funerals, not just decades, but the fabric felt strong and somehow luxurious, despite its fraying edges and fusty smell. When I had finished lacing the shoes, I took the remains of the candle and found my way out along the corridor, navigating towards the sound of low voices coming from a large room near the kitchen.

The room was filled with heat. Broken strips of delicately carved wood crackled and spat in a gigantic hearth - more of Rupert’s furniture being burned. Candles surrounded the fire and lined the mantelpiece above it. Harvey and Richard were sitting next to it on a long sofa. They each held a glass of wine. Richard lay stretched out with his legs crossed and one long arm along the back cushion. Rupert had found him some hunting tweeds, which he was now wearing as comfortably as if they had been from his own wardrobe. Harvey was in a thick sailing jumper and red corduroys, sitting forward with his elbows on his knees and cradling his glass between them as he stared into the flames.

Bryce was sitting with one leg crossed beneath the other in an armchair opposite. His hair hung down in wet, black ringlets and his beard glistened in the orange light. His size had made Rupert’s selection of clothing for him difficult. After some thought, he had decided that there was only one wardrobe which might contain something large enough to fit him. This had belonged to his wife’s sister, a very large woman who had lived with them in her dying years. Bryce was, therefore, now wearing a voluminous, pink night robe decorated with black Chinese lettering and pictures of swallows. Beneath, he appeared to be wearing two pairs of long walking socks that disappeared up over his knees. What lay beyond that was anybody’s guess. The three raised their glasses when they saw me.

“Very smart,” said Harvey. He patted the seat next to him. “Come and sit down son.”

I took a seat and Richard poured me a glass from a bottle that had been warming by the fire.

“Took your time,” said Bryce. He wobbled his eyebrows at me, grinning. “Not easy is it, in another man’s bath. Can take a while for things to, you know, happen.”

Richard leaned across and handed me my glass. “Bryce…” he warned.

“You get there in the end though, eh?” He winked at me, nodding. “Know I did.”
 

Harvey frowned and swiped the air at him. “Cut it out, Bryce!” he said.

“God’s sake, Bryce, you didn’t, did you?” said Richard.

“Ahm only jokin’ y’eejits,” said Bryce. “Think I’d take a wank in another man’s bath water? After youse pair had been in it before me? Christ’s sake, all them old pubes floating around and everything.”

He sat back in his chair. “No way I’d be able to get a stiffy.” He gave me another wink and gulped his wine.

“Where’s Grimes?” I said, trying to hurry the thoughts from my head.

“No sign yet,” said Richard.

“His lordship’s getting some food ready,” said Harvey.

“Aye, no too soon either,” said Bryce. “I’m starving.”

I suddenly realised how hungry I was too. We hadn’t eaten all day; the rain had made it impossible. At that moment I heard a clattering sound as Rupert walked in. He was carrying another tray, this one much larger, which I helped him lie carefully down on the table in front of the fire.

“Dinner is served, gentlemen, dinner is served,” he said, straightening up. The tray was full of china bowls filled with a steaming brown stew. I looked more closely and saw cubes of grey meat encased in transparent jelly. The air was filled with a strong, gamey smell that made me recoil.

“Is that…” said Harvey.

“‘Fraid I wasn’t left with much after my guests left,” said Rupert. “All the fresh stuff gone, tins as well.” He motioned towards the bottle of wine. “Made quite a dent in the old Claret too. Only stuff they wouldn’t touch was, er, for the hounds. Used to buy all their grub in bulk, so, loads of it left. Mostly what I tend to eat these days. Tastes better heated up.”

He looked around at us nervously.

“Hope that’s alright,” he said. Then he wiped his shaking palm upon his shirt, reached for his collar with his finger, faltered and let the hand fall. The gesture gave me a sudden strange pang of loss and helplessness and I felt tears spring to the corners of my eyes. I wanted to pull the bowl towards me and eat it and tell him it was alright to be serving us dog food, that he was a good man for letting us stay, that he didn’t deserve to be living alone in an ancient, crumbling mansion without his wife. I caught myself, surprised at this sudden well of emotion, and wiped my hand across my eyes.
 

We think that language binds us, keeps us close, but sometimes I wonder how far apart we really are.
 
We can make a million assumptions from the movement of an old man’s hand, most of them probably incorrect. All we have to go on is our own skewed window on the world. We’re like hermits living in the attics of big houses on lonely hills, watching each other with broken telescopes.

“All good with me,” said Bryce. He leaned forward and grabbed the bowl, shovelling a fork-load into his mouth. Suddenly he stopped, mid-chew, one cheek bulging with meat, and stared up at the door. Grimes had walked in. She was wearing a deep red velvet dress that ran to the floor. The tight line of the fabric ran from her upper thigh, over her hips and across the tight swell of her abdomen. Her hair was unclipped and fell in curls around her pale shoulders, light ringlets venturing further down towards the small, faint line of her cleavage.

“Well I…” said Rupert. “I do say. You look beautiful. Remarkable.”

She cast a shy gaze around the room. I noticed it landed for too long on Richard. This is when it finally clicked for me and I wondered why I hadn’t seen it before. Ever since the barracks she had behaved differently around him than around the other men. Maybe I had assumed that this was down to his natural military authority, or that sense of easy entitlement he had, but it was clear to me now; she had feelings for him. As this all began to dawn on me, my eyes drifted over to Bryce, still mid-mouthful in his pink robe. He hadn’t moved a muscle. I heard him gulp his mouthful of dog food and rest the bowl back on the table. As he did so, he caught my eye and I saw him flinch from my gaze.

“Feels a bit tight,” said Grimes, wriggling a little. “Your wife must have had quite a figure.”

“She did,” said Rupert. “In her day, yes, she did. Thank you so much my dear, I did so want to see it worn again.”

 
“That’s OK,” said Grimes. “It’s nice to be in something other than uniform for a change.”

She smiled and looked down at the tray of steaming bowls.

“Great,” she said. “What’s for dinner?”

We ate the dog food quickly and in silence. It was better than the rat we had eaten by the stationery lorry and my own ravenous hunger overpowered the feelings of nausea that washed up and down my throat as I swallowed. When I had finished, I emptied the wine into my mouth and rinsed it around to rid it of the taste, but I had a feeling it would be with me for a few days.

Rupert took the plates back to the kitchen. When he returned, he was holding Alice’s stringyphone in his hands. I instinctively stood, stopping myself making a grab for it.

“I found, er, this,” said Rupert. “You left it in the bathroom. Is it, er, important in some way?”

I felt the others’ eyes on me. They had seen Alice and I talking on the stringyphone in the barracks, but I hadn’t told them I’d taken it with me when we left.

“It’s my daughter’s,” I said. “She left it behind. I sort of…talk to her on it.”

Rupert raised his eyebrows. “Talk to her?” he said, looking down at the cans and fraying string, turning them in his hands. Finally he nodded, as if he understood. “Used to play with these as a child. Me and my elder brother Godfrey. Made huge ones that stretched across the lawn. Wonderful fun. Wonderful.” He nodded, then passed the cans back to me.

“You’ve been carrying them all this time?” said Richard.

“Around my neck,” I said. “It helps. I can feel them, it reminds me.”

“That’s nice, mate, really nice,” said Harvey, putting a hand on my shoulder. He looked around the room. “Hey, we should sign them, put our initials on them or something, what do you think?”

Grimes and Richard nodded.
 

“Would you mind, Ed?” said Richard. I shrugged and shook my head.
 

“Just a mo,” said Rupert. He left through the door and returned a minute later with a short kitchen blade. “Bit blunt but should do the trick,” he said, passing it to me. I looked at the others.

“You first,” said Grimes. I held the point of the blade between my thumb and forefinger and carefully scratched my initials at the bottom of one can. Richard went next. Bryce, who had said nothing, just looked at me, both hands on the arms of his chair, until the cans and knife arrived in his lap. He took his turn, then leaned across and offered the cans to me. As I took them, he held onto them a little and put his face close to mine.

“I knew I liked you,” he said quietly, and let go.

Then we got very drunk. Rupert brought in bottle after bottle of wine from his cellar, then port, then more of the ancient whisky, then more wine. He told us all about the house in its heyday, about his childhood, the grand parties and famous guests that had stayed. Whenever the conversation began to veer towards asteroids, we each somehow managed to steer it back onto something else. It was as if the subject itself was a friend who had already had too much to drink and couldn’t be trusted to talk in case he said something nobody wanted to hear.

At one point Rupert mentioned the boats and things faltered.

“Where do you think they’re headed?” said Harvey.

“Who cares where they’re headed?” I blurted. “I’m not getting on them.”

The room stared at me.

“What do you mean, you’re
not getting on them
?” said Richard.

“I’m just not,” I said. “Why would I? I’m finding my family and getting them out of there.”

Richard put down his glass.

“
What?
” he spat. “Where the hell do you think you’ll go?”

“We were fine in the barracks,” I said. “Life was simple, we had everything we needed. Safety, shelter, food, water. All we have to do is hold out until things start to get back to normal. We’ve already started to see the sun coming through the clouds, which means that soon things will start growing again. We could grow vegetables, build greenhouses…”

“Wait, wait, wait,” said Bryce. He leaned forward and peered at me from where he was standing unsteadily by the fire. “Veszhtables? Greenhousesh? What do you think this is,
The Good Life
? What’s your plan, you gonnae…gonnae start a fucking commune or something?” He gave a hoot and wobbled back on his heels, gripping the fireplace to stop himself from falling into the flames.

“Why?” I said. “What’s wrong with that? Why do we need to leave the country? Where would we go? What’s there that’s so great? Internet? Television? Department stores? Fast food?”

Richard leaned forwards and began counting on his fingers.

“Medicine, clean water, sanitation, midwifery, roads, transport, everything that pulled this world out of the dark ages and took the nasty, brutish and short out of life.” He rabbit-eared his fingers. “You think that
going back to nature
is going to make your life more enjoyable? You’re a fantasist, Ed, and a selfish one. What about your kids and your wife? You think they’d be alright? You think you could really support them and protect them? You probably couldn’t even keep a cactus alive, let alone feed your family from a vegetable patch.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” I said.

“I’m saying, society has evolved, Ed. It’s not what it used to be for one very good reason: it was shit and people weren’t very good at staying alive. We got sick and died daily. Childbirth usually ended in death for the child, the mother or both. Pain, filth, famine and war were everywhere and you were lucky to reach thirty without being stabbed, shot, tortured, decapitated, hung, drawn and quartered, burned at the stake or thrown in a dungeon to rot. People didn’t live in some blissful utopia where everyone had an allotment and looked after each other. We
killed
each other because we were starving and terrified most of the time. The last two hundred years have seen us grow, understand, build systems and infrastructures that keep us healthy and happy. We can dive to the bottom of the ocean, fly around the world, go to the moon, Mars, beyond. And all you want to do is go and live in
River Cottage
. We’re
not supposed to live in the fucking dirt, Ed.
We’re
not.”

With that, Richard snatched his drink and stood up.

“Not going on the
fucking
boats,” he muttered. He glared back at me, then faced the fire. “Ridiculous.”

“I could grow vegetables if I wanted,” I mumbled, refilling my glass. Bryce began to laugh.

“Alright boys, alright,” he said. “Time out. Ed, don’t be a dick. And Dick, get down off your high-horse, you sound like you’re running for…I dunno…King of…bloody…pfft…anyway. Rupert, old chum, old mate, have you got…got any kinda…I dunno…entertainment for this party?”