The Last of Us

Alex puts down his DS. ‘I think she did die. I think she got sick. I think there’s no Queen.’

Calum Ian: ‘What about the Prime Minister? I bet they put him underground, miles under where there was no bad stuff could happen. I bet he’s still there, eating apples, drinking milk. And I hope he chokes on some of that milk, and a bit of apple gets lodged and kills him.’

He chucks a rubber ball against the wall. When it comes back he catches it, nifty.

‘Who’s stronger – Santa or God?’ Alex asks Elizabeth.

‘That’s a hard one …’

‘Do you think Santa died?’

‘No, of course he didn’t. Santa can’t die.’

‘So then why didn’t he come last Christmas?’

Elizabeth sits forward, sighs. ‘I suppose I could say … well he’s a supernatural being, like a god really, so he can’t truly die. He’s protected by force fields. He’ll come this year, just you wait.’

Duncan makes a sound of spit in his throat which is disrespectful to Santa. Elizabeth does her frown at him to tell him not to give the game away.

Alex goes back to his DS for a bit. We hear swooshes and a beep-countdown then the game-over theme.

‘I absolutely hate Santa,’ he says.

Elizabeth: ‘No you don’t.’

‘Yes I do. I hate him and I hate God. And I hate baby Jesus and I hate the tooth fairy.’

‘You forgot the Easter bunny,’ Duncan says, doing his sound of spit again.

Alex says nothing.

‘Who wants a bedtime snack?’ Elizabeth asks.

By bedtime snack she means supper. By dinner she usually means tea. And when she says lunch, really that means dinner. It’s her own habit. I learnt that Elizabeth is in a separate country, and time, when it comes to food, because she’s from England.

Now Calum Ian calls her an incomer – which is kind of true, but not truly kind.

‘Incomers like their own name for food,’ he says.

Elizabeth looks away sadly, so I decide to stand up for her at once: ‘When Elizabeth’s mum and dad came to the island, they decided it was too risky for babies to be born here,’ I remind Calum Ian. ‘This meant that I got born in Glasgow. Same with all the other kids at school. So we are all incomers. Which makes you the odd-one-out.’

Alex claps; Elizabeth smiles. Calum Ian gives me the rude two-finger sign.

We turn on the gas fire. It dances blue when I blow on it. I almost prefer it to the real fire. Elizabeth gets out the sleeping bags, and we gather in to toast biscuits.

In the fire-dark her skin looks bumpy like Duncan’s. You can’t tell where the black or the blue of her eyes are, which is kind of scary, so I try not to look.

‘Do you think your mum and dad are dead?’ I ask her, without even knowing I was going to.

This is against the rules. Nobody says so.

Elizabeth burns and burns her biscuit. The smoke of it gets up my nose. She could be waxwork.

‘They are dead,’ she says.

The ask was my fault: my bad idea. So it’s my job right away to make her feel better. I say, ‘When my mum comes back from the mainland, the worst thing will be telling her about Granny, and the cousins. And my aunts and uncles. It’s going to be terrible. I’ll be glad to see her, but it’ll be terrible all the same.’

Elizabeth says nothing. So I try again: ‘My school book last year said three new babies are born for every two people dying. So at the gates of heaven it’s: hullo, hullo, hullo. Goodbye, goodbye. That’s the rule.’

Elizabeth just stares at her singed biscuit.

‘Don’t know where my mum and dad are,’ Alex says, licking his biscuit. ‘The last time I saw Mum, she was just away for a minute. Wish they’d come home.’

‘Our dad’s away on his boat,’ Duncan says, before Calum Ian can stop him. ‘He was gone away to bring food back from the mainland. That’s why we can’t be staying with you lot. We were told to wait at home. Sorry, but he ordered us there.’

‘Always do as we’re told,’ Calum Ian says.

This makes the MacNeil brothers remember about leaving. They want to get back before it’s dark. I ask Elizabeth if I should follow them and get back our food, but she tells me just to forget about it.

Our house is the shape of a loaf tin. It’s good because it doesn’t have any wrong smell. Also, there are three beds in one room, so we can sleep together. Also, it has a gas stove (Calum Ian changes the cylinders) and thick walls and a roof with flat bits for collecting rainwater.

Also, it’s not any of our old homes. This helps us to become a fresh family. Which is especially good for Elizabeth, who has no family of her own.

Before bed it’s tick-check time, then we do the routine with the radios.

Same static-noise as always.

We unpick the cereal boxes from the skylight, and lie heads together under the window. I forgot that in the summer stars don’t exist. In wintertime you can even see them going to school in the morning.

Now Elizabeth tries to remember all the things her dad said about the stars, and the sky. It doesn’t last very long. Usually if I’ve run out of memories I make stuff up, but she has a rule for herself against that.

‘The past is precious,’ she says. ‘It has to be correct.’

It’s when she starts remembering about planets going around the sun, and moons going around the planets, that I remember – the riddle that Mum told me. And because it’s a true memory, I want to tell it.

It must be a good one, a good riddle, because it gets them quiet. I know the answer but I won’t tell them.

‘You could give us a clue,’ grumbles Alex.

‘OK, here.’

For one clue only, I hold up my drawing of the Queen.

When Elizabeth puts on the night light I promise to tell them the next day if they still haven’t guessed.

Back Bay

Time – now

It’s not a very good day for seeing far out to sea. I sometimes forget to keep watching.

This morning the rain was marching adults in my dream. Mum used to call that sort of thing ‘wishful thinking’. She never said if wishing worked.

Then there are other things: things you didn’t wish for. Like the Gaelic weather sticker at the end of my bed. It said, ‘Tha i grianach’. I had to tear it, right through the happy face of the sun underneath.

All around the ferry building I put cups. Some of the plastic ones blew over, so I put round smooth stones from the shoreline in to steady them better.

Then I waited. And waited. I saw the sky go bright in a place I’d never seen bright before. So what did that mean?

Did you think it was a good idea, Mum, or not?

After the light got halfway I could see my reflection in the water under the pier.

A girl with long hair. Looking like she had a beard: her hair down in straggles, covering her face.

A reminder of who we found after we saw the painted dogs.

‘Looks like you’re facing your worst enemy,’ I say to the girl. But she wins in the end by hiding herself in ripples.

Later, I went to put flowers on the sea, to remember my friends, but the tide got me, up to my waist. That was a slip-up. I have to be more careful nowadays.

I have to think of everything.

It’s too easy to make mistakes. Two days ago, when I was on watching duty, I accidentally looked at the sun with the telescope. Since then there’s been a black moon in the middle of what I’m seeing.

Even so, I’m a smarter kid for having it. I won’t make the same mistake twice. Because the more mistakes I make, the smarter I’ll get.

Still, the thing to worry about is this: how many mistakes is a person allowed? How many mistakes can a single person make and still be? There isn’t a rule, or none that Mum ever told me.

She’s telling me the answer to her riddle. It’s time to pay attention: everything else can wait.

Now I see her, and I bury down to the bottom of my sleeping bag as the sound of her starts to become real: ‘What goes around the world but stays in the corner?’

Mum’s wearing her red and blue post office jacket. She asks the question in English so we know it’s a riddle.

We pass by Mr MacKinnon’s blue-eyed collie, the one that’s always on guard. Then the phone box. Then the forest of fifteen trees, then Orasaigh, the island where the rats used to live. Floraidh MacInnes once told me that there was a storm and all the rats came ashore and ate the annoying cats, but she’s a liar, I never believed her.

‘A shy man on a boat?’ I answer.

‘Works fine. I accept it works fine, but it’s not the answer I was looking for. Try again.’

It’s my work to get the bundles together. Mum’s fingers are inky from the packets. She whistles up for hills and down for dips. She keeps spare elastic bands in a coil around her wrist which make her hand go puffy.

‘My stand-in is coming tomorrow,’ she says. ‘He’s not been before. Early ferry, with any luck. Then that’s you and me are away on our Christmas shopping. How good is that?’

I give her the thumbs-up. It’s damp, but the heaters blast dryness. We go on the east road first, because most people live on that side of the island, then onto the north road.

My favourite postbox is the one which fills with sand in a west wind. It crackles inside like a shell.

Mum hands out biscuits to all the dogs that bark. She says that if we give enough biscuits to the barking dogs they’ll be too fat and soft in the head to chase us.

‘Chan ith a shàth ach an cù,’ she says, testing me as we drive away from another one. ‘Your mother wants to know the English translation – go ahead.’

‘None but a dog eats his fill.’

‘Apart from auld Eric in Cleit who wants to dig his ain grave with his teeth – well done.’

Mum said she learnt everything at school but the old sayings; now she wants me to know them, too.

‘Look, will you,’ she says. ‘Washing out in the rain.’

The washing is Mrs Barron’s. Mum chaps on her door. Mrs Barron is OK. Mum gets permission to take in her sheets, and when she comes back she smells of mist. Mrs Barron has handed her a letter for posting. The letter has a lovely stamp: hummingbird, green and gold.

She hands the letter to me and I put it in the going-away postbag.

‘Using up his collection,’ Mum says. ‘Since Mr Barron died. Last year it was Jubilee editions. I’m forever telling her that it’s like tearing up ten pound notes – but she has her ain mind.’

I let my fingers sift the letters in the bag. Some are smooth, others pebbly.

There’s a sheep scratching its arse on the last postbox before we get on the round back for home.

‘Fine day for it,’ Mum says, as she unlocks and empties the postbox beside the sheep. She’s mostly polite to animals in case they’re the departed returned.

When she gets back in the car I answer, ‘Stamp.’

Mum draws a tick in the air. ‘Full marks, a ghraidh! Around the world, yet stays in the corner. You got it perfect.’

‘But that doesn’t work, Mam. What if you posted a coconut? Or any round thing, like a ball? There wouldn’t be corners then.’

‘Seadh? When did you hear of anyone posting coconuts or footballs? Is that even likely?’

‘It’s exactly where your riddle doesn’t work.’

The ribbon road shines with sun and rain. Eilean Mor shows through rags of cloud.

On the drive around to the south road Mum stops to ask the cows if they’ve ever heard the like of posting coconuts.

The cows look up for a bit, before going back to their usual grass-chewing.

It’s like stones you find on the beach. Polish them, make them shine. Keep them warm in your hand.

Make a new ending. Where nobody gets sick, and the electricity comes back, like it should’ve done, like it always did when there was only a storm.

Nineteen days ago

It’s a clock which wakes me, which means I’m in trouble, as the alarms were meant to be turned off.

There’s a big mess in the room. I only notice it when it gets bad enough to hide nearly all the floor. There’s dirty clothes belonging to Alex: hanging in fankles from the pram we brought in last night. I think the pram was from a game he was playing: another game where he fell asleep and had to be lifted to bed.

We began shopping for clocks to keep time. Best of all is the radio-clock which Calum Ian found, which even tells the day of the week and the date. Still though, it doesn’t remind you of what dates are important, or the dates you might forget. Alex couldn’t remember his birthday: was it the 11th or 12th of March? Then when the lambs came nobody knew if that meant it was Easter, or spring.

We found a diary in the post office which gave us the date of Easter. But what about spring? Then Duncan noticed we’d passed a day called British Summer Time Begins. That told us it was summer, and that we were already in it. But where had spring gone?

I looked in the library, but there wasn’t any useful books on it, not even in Space & Time.

Elizabeth is writing a new sign. She adds to the bottom of it then pins it between our beds, next to the posters for Health and Wellbeing and Food Groups and How We Grow.

Alex stands in front, reading slowly with his finger.

1 RULES FOR OUR HOME

1 Tidy as you go.

2 Share food & don’t waste food.

3 Paper plates save water.

4 Make your own bed. I am not your mother

5 Don’t go to the toilet too close to the back door.

6 Dog poo on shoes indoors – bad!

7 Save batteries – don’t leave torches on at night.

8 Matches, matches do not touch, they can hurt you very much.

9 Ghosts & zombies are not real.

10 If it smells – don’t eat (main exseptions food in tins, vinegar, food in jars, mushroom soup.)

11 Teamwork will work!

12 Alarm off on every clock!!

Alex and I stare at the rules, wondering who’s to blame. I decide that the rules fit most for him – apart from the mushroom soup and vinegar and alarms bit, and the bit about dog shit, which was anyway a mistake.

Me: ‘All we needed to do was check our feet. And paper plates, they get mushy after a while.’

Alex: ‘A minute after you put me to bed I’m asleep and the torch stays on all by itself.’

Me: ‘All flavours of soup stink.’

Alex: ‘Would we get a dog? If we had a stray dog we wouldn’t need to waste a single drop of food.’

Me: ‘You can’t trust dogs to watch your food. Anyway, Alex always stands in dog shit. It’s disgusting.’

Alex: ‘You’re a dog shit.’

Me: ‘You’re the king of dog shits.’

Elizabeth: ‘Stop it, both of you! OK? All I want is for you to help me a bit more, that’s all.’

We go back to staring at the rules. Most hark back to something that’s happened. It’s hard to get everything right all of the time. Still, Alex does need to be reminded about matches. That’s a big fascination of his.

We get up, get dressed, do the routine: radios (fizzing noise), teeth (gums fine). I put batteries in the portable TV/DVD player. Snowstorm. Alex takes his injection without fuss this morning, then we have our breakfast. Today for a treat it’s creamed rice, which I used to hate but now love, especially with jam. Then when we’re done Elizabeth goes through the cupboards, making notes of anything we need. I have a suspicion of what she’s going to say before she comes out with it.

Elizabeth: ‘There’s a big issue I kept off the rules. It would be great if you’d help.’

Alex’s eyes swing up from sucking his sleeve.

‘It would really help if you’d come New Shopping. Even if you end up staying outside, it doesn’t matter. It’d just be a help to have the company.’

Alex switches from sucking his sleeve to the neck of his T-shirt. The drool on his clothes makes him stink like a dog’s bone. I tell him to pack it in.

Elizabeth: ‘I’d appreciate it.’

Alex: ‘What about Duncan, and Calum Ian? Can they not be your sidekicks?’

Elizabeth: ‘Maybe they’ve decided to do their own shopping? I didn’t even ask. All I know is I can’t do ours all by myself.’

We think about it. Alex looks very doubting. He plays a blasting game with the lightsaber I made him out of yellow card and tinfoil.

Alex: ‘There is actually a black lightsaber.’

He says this when he’s trying to put you off. Usually the conversation goes: There is a black lightsaber – No there isn’t – Yes there is – No there can’t be because light is not black – Yes there is cos I saw it in my Star Wars Clone Wars Encyclopaedia. And black light is radiation. So there. This is what he says when he’s trying to pull the wool over.

Me: ‘Can we do something fun first?’

Elizabeth: ‘Like—?’

Me: ‘Can we go to the rocks and chuck bottles?’

Elizabeth: ‘We don’t just chuck bottles: we send messages. There has to be a purpose to everything.’

Alex: ‘Why?’

Elizabeth: ‘Because we lost our adults. Because we’re alone. So we do all we can, every minute of every day, to get help. Agreed?’

It isn’t always nice when she spells it out. Anyway, school’s cancelled. To make the agreement proper I head up to Elizabeth’s rule list and add underneath:

13. All go shopping (after nice stuff.)

This settles the business for the three of us. Then we shake on it so nobody can go back on their word.

We take the shore road towards Leideag. Some birds flap around like flags. Out to sea, those islands I can’t remember the names of. We always look for boats, though our eyes are getting used to not finding them.

Further along we join the beach. There’s a lot of mess on the sand, though nothing new. A jumble of rubber tyres with faded labels on them. Hundreds of kids’ plastic chairs, the sort you’d find in a playhouse. There was a skeleton in oilskins, now there’s just oilskins. Now and then the beach changes and a bone sticks out. Calum Ian and Duncan hate this beach, because they’re scared the bones and skeletons could be one of their uncles.

We come to the life jacket that used to be around the skeleton. It’s got foreign writing on it. It might be Spanish, or French? Anyway, it isn’t a local fisherman. Elizabeth has told this to the boys, but they’re too superstitious to even come close and they won’t ever listen.

A track takes us to the end of Leideag, to the radio mast and Message Rock. Calum Ian worked out it’s the best place to launch bottles: because it’s the bit of land sticking out, it’s outside the bay, and also, the island Orasaigh stops the bottles coming back in again. He even put out two markers – yellow wellie boots – at the best launch-off.

But now he won’t come, because he got cross last time we all came. The argument began with Alex:

Alex: ‘Don’t want to throw mine in.’

Elizabeth: ‘But you’re not losing it. You’re telling your wish to the sea by sending. That’s the rule.’

Calum Ian: ‘A lot of rubbish, making wishes. Seadh, I bet they won’t come true. I bet we all end up wishing for the same thing. That would be dumb.’

Elizabeth: ‘We might not.’

Calum Ian: ‘So what’d you wish for? And you? And you? Aye: you all wished for everyone to come back, didn’t you?’

Me: ‘How did you know?’

Calum Ian: ‘Stupid fucking rubbish, wishes.’

But this morning it’s just us three. For my message I draw a picture of me with realistic hair standing beside our house. The house is a deliberate kid’s version (lots of square windows, a pig’s tail of smoke from the chimney) for extra impact. Alex has drawn himself holding a black lightsaber. No details. Elizabeth has done all the details of herself: address, age, name, family name, class at school, hair colour, cos she’s like that.

We get to the sticking-out edge of Message Rock and chuck them in. My one seems to wait for a bit – then it hurries off. It always seems to be mine that gets washed back up on the beach, which makes Alex gloat. He says he has a better throw than me, but I think it’s just luck.

At school we learnt about St Kilda. The people there ran out of food and they got tetanus and anyway there was no TV so they sent sea-mail. Sea-mail from St Kilda doesn’t get to America, it gets to the mainland. It’s a law of nature for all time. When the rescuers finally got to St Kilda the men had waited so long they’d grown beards. No one wanted to stay after, so that was the end of St Kilda.

We watch the tide as it starts to cover the rocks guarding the bay. There’s seals on the rocks, curled up like black bananas, not caring about what happened.

Me: ‘To the seals it’s all normal. Except for the rubbish, and the oil slick, which anyway didn’t last.’

Alex: ‘I used to think there was a plughole and the sea was a sink. That’s why the tide went up and down.’

Elizabeth: ‘It’s a good idea.’

Me: ‘It’s eejit-talk.’

Alex: ‘You’re an eejit.’

Me: ‘Do whales not hibernate?’

Elizabeth: ‘I don’t think so. I never heard of that.’

Alex: ‘Why don’t people hibernate? Bears do. And squirrels. And birds.’

Me: ‘Birds don’t hibernate you eejit!’

Elizabeth: ‘Nobody’s an eejit, OK? It’s a good question. I don’t know why people don’t hibernate. We’re mammals after all, and some mammals hibernate.’

Alex: ‘Do you think my mum and dad might be hibernating?’

Elizabeth looks away to the wrecked trawler.

If the sun’s low we can watch the bottles bobbing and shining for a bit, until they pass over to the sound. This morning it isn’t long before they disappear, which makes me think about how big the sea is.

Big enough for the nearest island to be blue. The mainland, to be gone.

Back when we used to take the ferry it was five hours to Oban. It never seemed too far when there were TVs and DVDs and games and dinner and showers and friends to run around with. But now the sea goes on for ever.

Alex: ‘Goodbye bottle.’

Me: ‘It can’t hear you, it’s a bottle.’

Alex: ‘Are you sure there’s no ghosts on that ship?’

Elizabeth: ‘Positive.’

Alex: ‘My bad dream is when everyone starts to come alive. I see them coming from the boat. They walk along the bottom of the sea. Then they start to come up the beach and I’m running and crying. But I’m not proper running – my legs are too slow. Are you really sure?’

Elizabeth: ‘Yes.’

Alex: ‘How sure?’

Elizabeth: ‘Listen: Dad said there was no such thing as ghosts. He said ghosts were just a figment of the imagination.’

Alex: ‘What’s a figment?’

Elizabeth: ‘A part that’s not real. A part you ignore.’

There’s no hazard tape on the door. Elizabeth’s rule for this is: Be aware anyway. Someone was digging in the back garden: there’s a pit, lined with tatty plastic. There’s no broken windows, and the door’s unlocked.

Elizabeth goes in first. ‘Hullo?’ she shouts.

No answer.

The carpets are red and gold in patterns like a king’s robes. No smell. So far. Stairs with a metal chair for going up and down on, for someone old, or with a bad back, or broken legs. Elizabeth signals us in.

Downstairs there’s a front room, kitchen. It’s very untidy. The walls are golden from smoking. Out the kitchen window we see a back garden with gnomes. Some of them are fallen over, sleeping. Windchimes trying to wake them up.

In the kitchen cupboards of old people you’ll usually find golden syrup, gravy powder. Good finds today: oatcakes, digestives, lemon curd. Hot chocolate to add to our hot chocolate supply back home.

The fridge: shut. I wear my perfume-hanky and open it. Instant pong. The food inside gone slurpy black. Elizabeth works away behind me, collecting all the worthy stuff I can’t be fashed getting: hand-spray, mousetraps, gloves, hats, scarves, clothes. Alex comes back from the cupboard under the stairs with new bedsheets.