The Missing Link (6 page)

‘Now what?’ I said, sitting up carefully and propping myself against the table leg. Tina yawned and tried to find room to shrug.

Around us now, we could hear the sounds of voices and slamming doors as the motorists returned to their cars.

‘I dreamt I was comfortable,’ said Tina. ‘I dreamt I had a family.’

‘Where is your family?’ said Darling.

‘I never had one,’ said Tina. ‘Not a proper one. The stork brought me to the wrong house. They hadn’t ordered me at all.’

‘Oh,’ said Danny.

‘Yeah, oh,’ said Tina. ‘Oh, oh. Double O.’

The car engine started up and the caravan began to inch forward along the deck.

‘But what are we going to do?’ I said. ‘How are we going to get out?’

‘Why do you want to get out?’ said Tina. ‘They’ll have to stop some time, won’t they?’

There was a metallic clatter as we came off the ramp, and then we were rolling along smooth tarmac.

‘What if they get stopped at customs?’ I said. ‘What if they search the caravan?’

‘What if the sky falls on our heads?’ said Tina. ‘We’ll deal with it, that’s what.’

There was a cupboard in front of her nose and she reached out and opened it.

‘Oh, wow.’ She pulled out a packet of Frosties, nearly full. ‘My favourites, these.’

‘You can’t take them,’ I said. ‘They’re not yours.’

But the packet was already open and Darling, who seemed to share Tina’s opportunistic morals, dived in head first. Tina pulled her out and gave her a fistful on the draining board. Then she began to scoff them herself, and soon we were all at it, with Oggy hoovering up the dropped ones.

As the car moved through the town, the street lights were like strobes, brightening our little motor-home, then plunging it into darkness again. But before long we were sailing along the open road through the darkness.

‘Where do you suppose we’re heading?’ I asked.

Tina shrugged. Danny said, ‘Scotland.’

‘Not north,’ said Darling. ‘More like south east.’

‘You’d know, I suppose,’ said Tina.

‘Yes. I would, actually,’ said Darling.

‘Got a compass in your head, then, have you?’ said Tina.

‘As a matter of fact I have,’ said Darling. ‘It’s because I’m a bird. Whereas you, being a human being, only have a faulty calculator in there.’

Tina took a swipe at her, but Darling flitted nimbly aside. She landed on Danny’s head and began to comb his hair with her beak.

‘How did you two learn to speak, anyway?’ I asked Oggy.

‘Mother taught us,’ he said.

‘Clever Mother,’ said Danny, giggling, back to himself again now that the sea was far behind.

‘And Father,’ said Darling, ‘And Sprog, and Colin.’

‘Who’s Father?’ I asked. ‘Who are Sprog and Colin?’

‘Family,’ said Oggy.

‘Everyone talks at Fourth World,’ said Darling.

‘Fourth World?’ I said.

‘Our world,’ said Darling. ‘The world that Mother created.’

Instead of getting answers, I had been presented with more questions. I was going to ask them, but at that moment the engine of the
car
began to chunter and cough. The caravan lurched dramatically a few times and then, more smoothly, came to a stop. The car’s tail-lights were still on, but otherwise the caravan was engulfed in darkness. For a long time we waited, and the only sound was the rain falling on to the thin roof.

‘Let’s make a run for it,’ I said. But I had left it too late. A car door slammed and we could hear the clack of hard heels on the road. Then the other door slammed as well.

‘But what if someone comes along?’ said a man’s voice.

The woman who replied was on the other side of the window, so close to us that her voice made us all jump.

‘Oh, yeah?’ she said. ‘Like who? Good Samaritans in petrol tankers?’

She moved towards the door, and we could hear her fiddling with keys. ‘I told you we should have stayed in Holyhead,’ she grumbled. ‘You never listen. You always know best.’

There was more key jangling, and then we watched the beam of a torch bounce past the window as the man joined her.

‘Nag, nag, nag,’ he said.

It was terrifying, sitting there in the dark waiting to be discovered. I clutched at the flimsy little table, ready for anything. Danny’s breathing was so loud and harsh that I was certain the couple must be able to hear it. I wanted to say something to calm him, but I didn’t even dare whisper. The torch-light
wavered
about on the other side of the thin curtains, and weird shadows bloomed and swung. Then the key turned in the lock and the door opened.

Darling shot out like a black shuttlecock. The man ducked and for an instant the darkness was total again.

‘What was that?’ he said.

And then we were blinded by the beam. One by one we clambered out of the rocking caravan. Danny came last, all at sixes and sevens with himself. No one said a word until we were all out on the road, and then the man gathered his wits.

‘What on God’s earth do you think you’re doing?’ he said.

‘Thanks for the lift,’ said Tina.

‘Lift?’ said the man. We’ll have to see what the police think about that.’

My heart missed a beat, but Tina was as cool as ice.

‘Police?’ she said, peering with exaggerated care into the empty darkness all around. ‘Let’s ask them, so, shall we?’

I started laughing, then. I couldn’t help it. Danny joined in, and Oggy whined in sympathy.

‘Get out of here,’ said the man. ‘If I see you again, I’ll . . . I’ll . . .’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Tina. ‘I wouldn’t get back in that tin can if you paid me.’

She set off into the night and we followed. Behind us the caravan door clicked shut, and when I looked back the torch-light behind the
red
curtains created a warm glow. They wouldn’t have had to pay me to get back into it; not when I looked ahead of us at the alternative.

The road we were on was as black as sump oil. On either side the mountains reared up steeply and the night sky above them was only marginally paler. The rain wasn’t heavy, but it had a persistent quality that was very familiar to anyone from the West of Ireland. As we rounded the first bend, and then the next, it became apparent that we were nowhere near any kind of civilisation. Not a single light, near or distant, broke the blackness. There was no way of knowing how far we might have to go to reach shelter.

Oggy came to the rescue again.

‘Hang about,’ he said, and trotted off into the dark.

We dripped and waited. Darling went to sleep in my pocket, a warm little extra heart beside my own. Danny tried to scare us with ghost noises, but we were too wet and cold to be bothered. Oggy seemed to be gone for hours, but in reality it can’t have been more than a few minutes before he reappeared.

‘It’s not great, but it’ll do,’ he said.

We followed him down the road for a hundred yards or so, then clambered over a loose stone wall and across the slippery hillside to where a huge, jagged rock jutted out of the sheer mountain wall and created an overhang. Beneath it, the ground was stony but dry.

It smelt of sheep, and we quarrelled about the
best
way to share the two blankets, but eventually we settled ourselves in. I turfed Darling out of my pocket and tried to get comfortable.

Tina was accustomed to living rough and went out like a light. Danny was his usual, contented self and, for once in his life, he was tired, since he hadn’t slept. I was glad to see that he didn’t need a sedative. If anyone did, it was me.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t sleep. I lay on the stony ground, feeling alone in my wakefulness, abandoned by the others. Around me the night was vast and eerily quiet. Behind the friendly sheep smell were wilder ones; of rain and rock and cold, cold earth. Above me, the sky went on for ever. Lost in its enormity, I drifted and dozed, and dreamt of infinite space, and loneliness, and the mournful calls of whales across the oceans of the earth.

2

LAST TO SLEEP
and last to wake, I was pulled back from my dreams by someone rummaging in my pockets. I punched out with my elbow, and Tina squealed and called me something unrepeatable.

‘Have you eaten them all, or what?’ she said.

I sat up. Weak sunlight was leaking between two distant peaks and lighting our valley. Danny was awake, still wrapped in his blanket, and Oggy was below us on the hillside, patrolling. All my bones creaked with cold and damp as I sat myself up.

‘Well?’ said Tina, accusingly.

‘Of course I haven’t eaten them,’ I said, digging into my pockets and bringing out what was left of the flapjacks and carrot cake. It was all pretty squidged up and some of the packages had burst, but we were hungry enough not to mind too much, and Darling disposed of the grittiest bits.

‘I’ve got a grinder in there,’ she explained, pointing a claw at her croup.

I noticed that she wasn’t as all over black as I had thought. The morning sunlight caught spangles of iridescence on her feathers, surprisingly beautiful against the grey-green landscape.

I kept back a flapjack for Oggy, who wolfed it down with a disappointing lack of appreciation.

‘Now what?’ I said. ‘Are we going to hang around here all day?’

‘Darling’s gone to find a shop,’ said Tina. ‘So we can buy a map.’

Right on cue, she arrived back.

‘There’s a village about two miles east,’ she said. ‘I’ll show you the way.’

Like
Cuchullain’s sliotar
she bounced ahead of us, waiting for us to catch up before sailing off to the next perch. We dawdled along at Danny’s pace, except for Oggy, who quartered the rocky slopes on both sides of us, his nose telling him things we couldn’t begin to imagine. He put up a few rabbits, but he never came close to catching one.

‘I could if I wanted to,’ he told us. ‘I’m saving my teeth for the big stuff.’

‘Yeah,’ said Darling. ‘Those old horses in the Buddy tins.’

Tina and I laughed. But we were to learn, later on, that Oggy wasn’t joking.

A few cars passed us, but not many, and none of them responded to Tina’s hopeful thumb. We seemed to be walking for ever; more like four miles than two, but we got there at last. The village had a long main street lined with tourist shops and cafés, most of them closed for the winter season. There was a little filling station with a big sign which read:
NO PETROL. REGULAR
CUSTOMERS
ONLY
. Beside it was the mini supermarket that Darling had seen.

There were signs there as well, posted on to the door.
NO BREAD. NO MILK
. They didn’t seem to be putting anybody off, though. The shop was full of people loading wire baskets with tins and packages.

We shopped fairly randomly, picking up anything we fancied that didn’t need to be cooked. Oggy stood up and put his paws on my chest.

‘Buddy, Christie,’ he whispered, ‘I like Buddy best. Loads of tins. Loads and loads!’

I put six tins into the basket, then biscuits, cheese, chocolate, bananas, apples. In the other aisle, Tina was loading Spam and condensed milk and tuna fish, and something of a feminine nature that I decided not to ask about.

Danny was standing at the check-out, frightening the cashier.

‘Scotland,’ he was saying, all full of glee and chuckles. ‘We’re going to Scotland.’

‘What does he want?’ the girl said, to no one in particular.

A man with a look of authority came in from the back of the shop and I dashed to the rescue.

‘He wants a map,’ I said.

‘A map?’ said the man. ‘What does he want a map for?’

‘We all want a map,’ said Tina, hugging her loaded basket. ‘Have you got any?’

He pointed to a rack beside the door, where maps and postcards were jumbled together. Then he turned to the woman behind Danny in
the
line. ‘You can’t take all those tins of powdered milk, Mrs Jones. We have other customers, you know.’

Like a light going on in my head, I realised what was happening. There was no bread and no milk because there was no petrol for the delivery vans, and now people were beginning to panic and stock up. A scary feeling began to creep under my skin and I glanced around at the stacked produce. Once it was gone, how would it be replaced? I remembered a picture on television of a Russian supermarket, all its freezers empty, all its shelves bare. Surely it couldn’t happen here?

I wanted to get another basket; to grab anything and everything that might ward off the spectre of coming hunger. But it was too late. Mrs Jones was moving off, leaving a stack of powdered milk as a testimony to her fear. My own provisions were already being rung up, and Tina was adding her things to the basket as the cashier made room. I wiped the cold sweat from my forehead.

They would sort it out. Everything would soon be back to normal.

3

WE WENT BACK
out on to the road, lugging our plastic bags full of provisions and hitching, quite uselessly, the few cars and lorries that passed. Danny shuffled along, heroically but slowly, and our progress was minimal. I was already beginning to despair of ever reaching Scotland, but a couple of miles outside the village, to our surprise, we found a transport café with all its lights on. It had bright signs on the window, saying
TIME TO FILL UP
? and
TRUCK IN AND TUCK IN
, but inside it looked like a dingy and forlorn kind of place.

Danny and Tina went in, but Oggy was still whining about his Buddy, so I took him to the edge of the big lorry park to feed him. He wanted all the tins in one go. He nagged and nagged; said that he was starving and that it would save me having to carry it, so I compromised and tugged the ring-pull lids off three tins. He ate quicker than I could empty them, and then, as soon as he had finished the last bite, he went over the wall and threw up noisily. After that he was a bit more subdued, and agreed to wait outside the café for us.

For once, there was no shortage of anything.
The
only thing the café didn’t have was customers. It must have catered for a fairly heavy traffic most of the time, and in the empty quiet of the place we could hear big freezers chugging away in the kitchens. The waitress was young and clearly bored witless. While our food was being cooked, she sat on a chair at the next table and leant over the back of it.