The Testament of Jessie Lamb (5 page)

Mostly, Mum and Dad seemed to approve of it all. I remember when I went home and told them about the Chinese tree planting (which, of course, my Father of Wisdom knew all about), my Mum actually said, ‘We should do that.' And one Sunday the three of us went to one of the memorial services at Old Trafford, and Mum and Dad gave money towards the Women's Forest of Remembrance. Those memorial services were amazing. I'd seen them on telly but to be in the middle of a crowd that size, all singing, all standing in complete silence, all piling our one flower on the flower mountain–it was electrifying. In the car coming home Dad told us about a belief they used to have in Korea, that the souls of women who die in childbirth go to live in trees. And passers-by leave offerings of food and wine on stones under the trees. I like the idea of the women in the trees. I'd much rather think of them there, flickering in the moving leaves, than buried in the dark earth.

Nat and Baz wanted to campaign against scientists; I had an argument about that with Baz. We were walking to YOFI and he suddenly said, ‘I think we should focus our energies on closing research labs.'

‘Why?'

‘Because that's where MDS has come from. From scientists researching more and more complicated, horrible things which nobody needs.'

‘They do research to find the cures for diseases!'

‘Some do. But most of them are researching microbes or subatomic stuff, or genetic mutation. Just for the sake of knowing more–trying to control everything.'

‘It's good to know more.'

‘You think? Like splitting the atom? Einstein said if he'd known what they were going to do he would've become a shoemaker.' Baz tapped a triumphant little
ta-da
! on the letterbox we were passing, and grinned at me. I liked it when he grinned.

‘What about penicillin?'

‘You're just in favour of scientists because of your dad. Even apart from weapons, why should they invent more and more diet pills and tranquillisers? It's because they think they're god, that MDS has happened. And that's why they're arresting scientists.'

‘You really think that's alright?'

‘Well why should they go on messing about with everything, scot free?'

I did say that because of my Dad. He worked in a fertility clinic, in the lab where they made embryos. After all the pregnant women had died, they carried on making embryos for MDS research. He believed the more scientists could find out, the better. But now he doesn't want me to act on that belief. In his book, it's fine to
say
you agree with something, but not to
do
it.

I keep coming back to that, that tackiness of Mum and Dad's lives, which is like treading in chewing gum. They say they believe things, then they don't act upon them. Everything's impossible because of something else. It makes me feel as if I'm suffocating. If there is nothing I can do, then what's the point of being alive?

Back then, Baz argued his case at the next meeting and it was agreed; one of our aims would be, to stop all pointless scientific research. And since my Dad's wasn't pointless, that was fine. We also started our carbon self-rationing scheme, and everyone agreed not to over-spend our personal quota, including at home, which meant we had to convert our parents. Mum and Dad went yes yes you can plant veg in the garden, yes we can stop the supermarket run, if you've got time to go to the market. Transferring the effort to me, and then niggling if they thought I hadn't spent long enough on my homework. I was doing GCSE coursework and there was never enough time. One evening when I came home from a meeting Mum and Dad were sitting side by side at the computer booking an online holiday. The human race facing extinction, and my parents comparing web prices for a summer break on the Spanish Med. Mum asked if I preferred the idea of a hotel near the beach, or a villa with a pool up in the hills. She said we'd take Mandy, it would give her something to look forward to. I stared at her and watched her face turn red.

‘What d'you want us to do?' she said. ‘We've got to get on with our lives.'

‘
Why
?' I said it sarcastically, in the way I know she hates, and my Dad said ‘Jessie–' in a warning voice. So I went to my room and slammed the door. They thought it was alright. A plane filled with people like them who all thought it was alright would burn up tons of fossil fuel and pour carbon into the sky, so they could lie by a Spanish hotel pool and get skin cancer. When they called me to tea I didn't go and when my Dad knocked at my door I shouted at him to go away.

I lay in bed and thought about the holidays we
used
to have. We went to Scarborough and stayed in Nanna Bessie's caravan. I loved it, sleeping on a bed like a shelf with the wind rocking the caravan, waking up to look out of the porthole at the bright morning light; going down the caravan steps and over to the shower block where you had to pick your way among the snails who crawl in there at night; helping Dad dig fortifications in the wet golden sand. Sand in your shoes, in your pants, in your bed; sand in your sandwiches. Mum and Dad laughing and splashing each other. Why couldn't we have holidays like that anymore?

Or the summer days out, at home? We used to take a picnic up on the moors, above Dovestones, we called it Kingfisher valley. The ferns were taller than me and we used to play hide and seek for hours, till the air was full of the green smell of crushed fern. Dad saw a kingfisher, he said it was electric, the bluest bird in all the land, better than a peacock. We used to sit very still and watch for it. We were happy then, the three of us. Now it was the two of them against me. The way they lived was horrible.

Later on Dad came back and knocked again. He'd got a toasted tea cake for me. I let him in and he sat on the end of my bed. ‘I heard some good news today,' he told me.

‘Right. About trashing the planet.'

‘No actually. About surviving MDS.'

‘It wouldn't even have spread if it wasn't for people like you.'

‘What d'you mean?'

‘The virus was released at airports. If everybody stopped flying–'

‘It would be shutting the stable door. What d'you want, a return to the dark ages?'

‘Yes. Imagine, when there was bubonic plague, if everyone had flown around spreading it instead of staying in their village. The human race would probably have died out then.'

He laughed and I told him to get out of my room, but then he said, ‘Seriously, Jess, they think there may be some new babies within the next year.'

‘What d'you mean? There's already some top-secret cure that only scientists know about?'

‘No. But there are some patients at the clinic now–and at other clinics and hospitals round the world–who may, just possibly, have a chance of giving birth to live babies.'

‘And how can they do that, when being pregnant kills them?'

‘They've agreed to be given drugs early on to lessen the MDS symptoms and–and put them to sleep, so the babies can survive.'

‘What d'you mean,
put them to sleep
?'

‘Well, they're in a drug-induced coma. They call them Sleeping Beauties.'

‘Can they ever wake up?'

‘No. Maternal Death Syndrome destroys the brain during pregnancy. But the baby could survive.'

‘You get a live baby out of a dead mother?'

‘When the pregnancy nears its end, the doctors can do a caesarean.'

‘And the baby doesn't get ill?'

‘The disease attacks the mother, not the baby. The baby can still take what it needs from the mother's body.'

‘It sounds gruesome. Everybody's mother would be dead.'

He smiled. ‘Well it's not a long-term solution, Jesseroon. But it is a start.'

After he'd gone I lay on the floor under my window, staring up into the beech tree as the light began to fade. They were always threatening to chop that beech down because it's too big to be near houses. From the floor you get the sky through the bare branches in winter and spring, and the light is always different. And when the leaves start to come out they're floppy and damp like new-hatched chicks. Then they harden off and darken, but on a sunny day you can still see the sparkle of the sky coming through them. After I've been staring at them for a bit it's like I'm a leaf too, seeing fragments of the bright sky through the other leaves above me, fluttering in the wind with all the others, or bending under drips of battering rain. It's a sort of trance, I'm not Jessie anymore, I'm not this awkward separate object, I'm part of the tree, and there's nothing in my head but wind and sky,

I lay staring at the beech and I thought. If my Dad was right–if the doctors could get out babies who were OK even though the mothers died–then everything would carry on. We wouldn't be extinct. There would be a future world and if we worked hard to change things, it would have the chance of being really really different, and better, than this one. I got up and started making a list of the ways we could save energy around the house.

I keep thinking about what I'll do. Twisting and turning in my mind to find a way of behaving that will convince him. There isn't one that I can imagine. We are in opposition. I will always want to do this, and he will always want me not to. Day will always be light, and night dark.

When he comes in he's got a pizza although he knows I don't eat that crap–in a cardboard box on a circle of polystyrene. And a carton of orange juice. I was sorry for him when he wasn't here but now the sight of him makes me shake with rage. ‘Get out! Get out! Get out!' I swipe at the pizza and send it spinning to the floor. He looks surprised.

‘I thought you'd be hungry.'

‘I don't eat that!' I shriek. ‘You can't keep me here.' I want to run at him and hit him but I trip because of the bike locks and he bends to try and help me up so I twist round and bite his hand as hard as I can. I'm grabbing at his arms, digging my nails in, trying to swing my feet round to kick him. He yelps and scrambles up away from me, nursing his hand. ‘Let me go!' I scream. ‘You can't keep me prisoner, let me go!'

‘Stop it,' he says. ‘No one can hear you.'

‘You going to keep me here forever? Living on junk food and going to the toilet in a bucket? You think you can do that?' I crawl as fast as I can towards the bucket and knock it over, the pee slopping across the floor. I roll in it so my clothes are wet and when he comes towards me again I lash out with my feet together and catch him on the shin.

He backs away. ‘I don't want to do this. I only want to stop you.'

‘You'll never stop me. Never. I hate you!' I grab the pizza box and try to hurl that but it flops open and falls. The carton of juice nearly hits him, though. He goes out quickly and locks the door behind him.

If I smashed the window and cut myself he'd have to take me to hospital. He wouldn't let me bleed to death, he'd have to do something then. I'm trying to get to my feet when he comes back in and grabs me; I overbalance and we both go crashing to the floor. I'm kicking and scratching at his face but he's stronger and he's got my arm and is twisting it behind my back. I scream. I keep screaming but he's got the other one and he's kneeling on my arm and he's tying something round my wrists. Tying my arms behind my back.

‘No no no!' I roar. He pulls it tight and knots it then he crawls to his feet and stumbles away from me. I can't get up because I can't use my hand to push myself up. I wriggle around on the floor like a fish on the riverbank. He goes into the corner and squats down with his back against the wall and his face in his hands, crying.

After a bit he stops. He speaks in a slow flat voice. ‘I don't want to tie you up. I want to undo your hands and legs and let you go into the bathroom for a bath and to put on some clean clothes.'

‘On my own?'

‘Of course.'

‘Then can I go?'

‘No. Then I'll fix the leg locks again.'

‘Fuck off.'

‘This is for your own good.'

‘No it isn't.'

‘You are deluded. You are temporarily deranged. I am keeping you safe until you can think sensibly.'

‘Your definition of thinking sensibly is
me
thinking what
you
think.
You
are deranged. You should be tied up till you agree with me.'

He stares at me bleakly then he suddenly laughs. I'm lying on my side in pee-soaked clothes with my cheek on the gritty carpet and Dad's squatting there in the corner laughing at me. I burst into tears. He crawls over to me and helps me to sit up.

‘I'm sorry, Jess. Please, please, don't make this more horrible than it has to be. If you promise to behave I'll undo your arms.'

‘Why should I promise?'

‘There's no point in you fighting. It's not going to change my mind, and you're the one who'll be hurt.'

‘If you heard of a father locking up his daughter because he didn't like what she thought, you'd say it was an outrage.'