The Petitioners (11 page)

I took a deep breath and walked into the room where my mother lay on one of the single beds with one of Will’s blankets and a comfortably faded quilt over her. She would be so pleased when she woke up and found she wasn’t under one of the thin hospital covers. But how would we look after her if she needed further medical care? I had gathered Will wasn’t exactly a doctor, though I thought he might have been one of the nurses who had received extra training to fill the gap in medical and social care services once so many of the English and other immigrants had left during the past decade. I had been too young to pay very much attention to this but I could remember my parents discussing it. As usual Dad had pretended not to be too bothered, saying the day he had to rely on a doctor to diagnose what was wrong with him was the day he gave up hope and turned his face to the wall, with Mum countering that even if he wasn’t bothered on his own account he should be worrying about Dan and me.

I smiled to myself as I recalled this conversation. It was just so typical of my parents. An outsider coming in on them when they were in full flow like that would have assumed they didn’t get on very well together, but in fact their relationship seemed to be stronger than almost any other I had come across. Maybe airing all their disagreements was the answer.

While I was thinking, my mother’s eyelids had fluttered open and she was now staring up at me in terror.

‘Not my face,’ she said, and repeated it in a louder, higher voice. ‘Not my face!’

‘It’s all right, Mum,’ I told her, taking her hand. ‘Your face is fine.’

‘No! You can’t! Somebody help me!’

I patted her hand, feeling helpless. I gazed down at her, my eyes drawn again to the line of what seemed to be stitches. What was that? Had she acquired an injury and had facial surgery in the time between me escaping and Dr Watson dumping her on the floor here? Could she have recovered so quickly from what looked like a fairly major operation?

She was crying quietly now. I didn’t know how to make it stop. I thought she was re-living some terrible experience. I couldn’t begin to imagine what had happened to her. Maybe Will would turn out to have some knowledge of what kind of medical procedure it could have been. Whatever it was, it had resulted in vivid hallucinations, if that was what she was experiencing. I remembered the drug that had made her so sleepy, and the way Will had examined her arm with its puncture marks.

I had imagined it would be cosy and heart-warming to be alone with my mother for a while, but I couldn’t wait for the two men to come back.

‘Would you like some water?’ I asked timidly. ‘A cup of tea?’

She flinched away from me. ‘No tea. I don’t want tea.’ She glanced up at me again. ‘Who are you?’

Shock took my breath away. I tried to draw it in again, and felt myself going dizzy. I clutched at the end of the bed to stay upright. She pushed feebly at my hands.

‘Get away from me! You’re all the same – murderers!’

‘No, it’s me, Jen,’ I said, at last regaining my voice.

‘But who’s Jen?’ she said, eyes widening in fear.

‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry – you’ll remember later. I expect.’ I certainly hoped she would remember. What had they done to her? I had thought I trusted Dr Watson, but he must be involved in whatever had happened. I took her hand again and patted it, just for something to do. She snatched it away.

‘Get away!... Where’s my face? I can’t see it anywhere.’

I didn’t want to leave her, but I couldn’t bear to be with her another minute. I turned and went into the other room. I left the door open and I heard her sobbing, but there was nothing I could do.

I was peeling potatoes when Will and Jeff came back.

‘How is she?’ said Jeff.

I shrugged. ‘I can’t get through to her. I don’t know whether she’s still drugged or whether they’ve done something to her that…’

I couldn’t say any more. I gulped and looked down at the half-peeled potato in my hand.

‘It’s OK,’ said Will. ‘It’s probably a residual reaction to the drugs. I’ll go and have a look.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. I blinked back tears and glanced up at Jeff. ‘Did you find out anything?’

‘We couldn’t catch them,’ he said. ‘They had transport waiting… Do you want me to finish these?’ He indicated the pile of potatoes waiting to be peeled. ‘That should be enough to last us until a week next Friday,’ he added with amusement.

I had taken a whole sack of potatoes from the hut where Will kept them, and emptied them on the kitchen table. I suppose I thought that would keep me busy for long enough to forget about my mother and the sad state she was in.

Will came back, closing the door behind him. ‘She’s sleeping now. Probably the best thing.’

‘I hope she’s more alert by the time we move,’ said Jeff with a grimace.

‘Move?’ I said.

‘We’re going to have to get to another safe house,’ he told me. ‘The sooner, the better now that they know where we are.’

‘But Dr Watson…’

‘Can’t be trusted,’ he said. ‘None of them can. Watson at least remembers his responsibilities as a doctor – not to harm people. I suspect he knew they had finished with your mother, and that they would want her disposed of, which is why he brought her to us instead. But he works for them all the same, and he could be broken under pressure.’

Not wanting to ask any more about this, I looked at Will. ‘Are you coming too? To the next safe house?’

‘I’ll help you get on your way, but I need to come back here. This is where I live. I don’t want to leave unless I have to.’

‘Do you know who’s after us?’ I asked Jeff.

‘Forces of the old regime,’ he said. ‘That’s my best guess, anyway.’

It was a bit too vague for my liking. I had gathered from my parents that the old regime had been in the process of splintering into pieces even before the storm. But I didn’t think he would tell me any more, so I didn’t press him. If my mother had been awake and alert of course, it would have been a different story. I blinked back tears again and tried not to imagine that she might never be awake or alert again.

I went in and watched her as she slept. I hadn’t often done this, although it had happened a few times while we were in the hospital. I wondered if her sleep then had been drugged as it seemed to be now. I wished my father were there. He might be able to bring her back from the threshold of whatever nightmare world she was in danger of entering. I didn’t have any confidence in my power to do so.

GAVIN

Once again I had slept through all the excitement.

Others hadn’t been so lucky, I discovered in the morning almost as soon as I left my hut, where I had stayed in preference to huddling with others in the tent we had all wrestled with. The first thing that happened was that I fell over a body.

It wasn’t the ideal start to the day.

Things became even worse, if that was possible, when I saw the big tent lying in a heap on the ground, and recognised the things scattered about as the remains of the provisions Tanya and the team had left us.

Was anybody still alive in the chaos? Moving with some caution, as if there were going to be enemies round every corner, I searched the farm ruins, going from one building to another with dwindling hope. The last building I went into was Mrs Swan’s old home, the tumbledown barn nearest what was left of the farmhouse. At first I thought there was nobody there, but as I walked round the stone wall that was the only part of the interior to have survived the storm, I saw a small movement under some sacks in the corner, and heard a faint groan.

It was too big to be a rat, so I was brave enough to go over and fling back the sacking, to find Mrs Swan gazing up at me with big watery eyes.

‘Gavin!’ she whispered. ‘You’re alive!’

‘I think so,’ I said, giving her a hand to get to her feet.

‘Have they gone?’ she said, still in an undertone.

‘Yes, seem to have. Where are the others?’

‘Poor old Mr Jackson. He tried to stand up to them.’

‘Yes, I’ve seen him. What’s left of him.’

She closed her eyes against the horror.

‘Do you know who they were?’ I asked.

‘No. Raiders. I’ve never seen anything like it, Gavin. They were like wild animals –no, worse than that. They may have taken some people with them. I think…’

There was a thud as something large came down from the hayloft which, amazingly, still formed a second floor in the place. I made the futile gesture of shielding Mrs Swan with my body, until the dark shape resolved itself into Mark Sutherland, still in his cycling gear.

‘They took the young ones away with them,’ he said. ‘I don’t know about the other old man.’ He swallowed. ‘He’d only hold them up. I doubt if they’d take him very far before ditching him.’

‘I didn’t know you were up there!’ said Mrs Swan indignantly, sliding past me and going up to him. ‘Why didn’t you say something?’

‘I didn’t know if they were really gone… How did you manage to sleep through it all?’ he asked me, accusation in his tone.

‘Just my clear conscience and unblemished morals, I guess,’ I said.

He obviously didn’t appreciate the situation being taken lightly, if the glare he gave me was anything to go by.

‘Can you give me a hand outside for a bit?’ I added. I wasn’t all that keen on the task of burying the old man who had died in the night while I slept not a stone’s throw away, but it was better than coming across him later with his face eaten off by a fox or a magpie.

Mark agreed to help, and even double-checked to make sure the man was actually dead, whereas I had been going by the greyness of his face and the rigidity of his body. Our grim task wasn’t easy on the rocky ground, so it took us a couple of hours to make a hole big enough. Before burying him, we wrapped him in a section of the tent just to make it more difficult for animals and insects.

Mrs Swan stayed out of the way while we did all this. Maybe she was from a generation in which it was mostly men who took part in the rituals of death. Or maybe she was just squeamish.

I had been squeamish until quite recently, but since then I had seen too much of death in various forms to be at all sickened by it. That was probably a bad thing, and it certainly wasn’t something I wanted to have as a permanent feature of my character, but I suppose it was only to be expected in the circumstances.

Mark preserved a stony silence as he helped me. He still hadn’t forgiven me either for sleeping through the raid, or for joking about my failure to wake up. Or he just didn’t like me very much. I hoped we might have the opportunity for an amicable parting before too long. If only I had known…

‘We’re going to have to move on,’ said Mark when we were finished.

I nodded, reluctant to agree but conscious that the three of us couldn’t possibly withstand another raid. I hadn’t a clue where we would go or what we would do when we got there. Maybe Tanya Fairfax would find us again. Maybe we could catch up with Declan or find Fiona and Dan – or all of the above. I had no wish to leave here, or to abandon my self-imposed never-ending task of recording who we had been in the hope that we would one day be able to start from that point instead of reverting to the standards of previous, less civilized times, but even I could see our situation here was untenable.

‘Where are we going to go?’ said Mrs Swan when we broke the news to her.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘The Highlands?’

‘Big place,’ said Mark, poking at the fire we had lit to get warm, although despite the physical effort we had engaged in I felt as if I was chilled to the bone and would never be warm again.

‘I knew some people who lived near Spittal of Glenshee,’ I said vaguely. I hadn’t really planned on ever going back there, but needs must. And maybe the other three were even now on their way back to the rebel stronghold. ‘My wife’s been taken to hospital near Pitlochry. We could head up that way and then decide as we go along.’

‘I like Pitlochry,’ said Mrs Swan, the light of reminiscence in her eyes. ‘We used to go to the theatre there in the summer – when it was still up and running.’

‘When we still had summers,’ said Mark.

‘They said on the cloudcast the dam had burst in the storm,’ said Mrs Swan. ‘I hope people managed to get out of the way in time.’

Just like they didn’t in Edinburgh when the waves came, I mused grimly.

‘How would we get up there?’ she continued.

‘Last time I was up that way we got a boat across to Fife, and a train up to Leuchars,’ I said, remembering my flight with Jen months before. ‘Then we went overland, some of the way in a cart and the rest walking.’

Mark was scornful. ‘Hmph! Trains in Fife? I don’t think so. Might as well go all the way by boat now.’

‘By boat?’ said Mrs Swan uncertainly.

‘Most of Fife’s under water. Or near as dammit. Best way’s to sail round what’s left of the coast and up the Tay as far as you can.’

‘Sail?’ I said. My record with travelling by boat wasn’t great. I had capsized a small sailing boat in the Forth when I was a beginner, and since then I tended not to trust ships of any size. Apart from the time Jen and I had been ferried over the Forth, that was. I had been too scared about everything else then to worry about being in a flimsy shell tossed around on the waves.