Page 78 of The Two of Us at the End of the World

“Probably just a matter of time,” she said to herself as she thought all this, looking down at her feet walking the long flat West Beach on sand so packed in and wind-seared it scarcely took a footprint. She walked to stay fit and to clear her mind, but most of all to tire her body enough to sleep properly. Some days it worked, most not.

“I’m already going a bit nuts,” she said. “Talking to myself.”

She turned round, suddenly self-conscious, sure that someone had heard her, but there was nothing but a clutch of turnstones and oystercatchers working the tideline to her right, and beyond them a cormorant that dropped into the sea and out of sight, plunging like a missile. She resumed her path and closed her eyes.

This was one of her games, something she’d done ever since she was a small girl, she’d keep her eyes closed and carry on walking confidently in a straight line, counting her paces and trying to best her record of the day before. It was a wide and hard-packed strand, so the major danger was tripping over the giant lengths of sea-kelp or tangles of bladderwrack that got thrown up and beached by the tides. Usually she could easily get up north of a thousand paces without losing her nerve and opening her eyes. There was a knack to walking parallel to the tideline and not veering off into the sea on one side or stumbling diagonally into the high dunes on the other. You just had to be very aware of the firmness of the sand and stick to the path you began on. Soft sand that was wet meant you were heading to the water, soft sand that was dry meant you were likely heading inland. She let her feet find her way and allowed her mind to relax into the closest she seemed to be able to get to calmness these days.

Chapter 25

Eavesdropper

Mouse – Year 201 AG

I went to the house by the monkey-puzzle tree with Storm, and made sure the floor wasn’t a trap, gone completely or so rotten it was liable to give way and tumble her into an unexpected cellar or anything like that. We climbed in through one of the empty window frames, taking care not to step on any of the broken glass, which was so embedded in moss and the earth that had begun to silt up against the outside wall that the one piece we did crack only made a muffled and dull noise that wouldn’t have got anyone’s attention if they were more than a few metres away. Nonetheless, we froze and listened for a good long while before carrying on. The room was just like any of the hundreds, maybe thousands, I’d looked in on in a life full of deserted buildings. Not so much dead and empty but strangely, quietly alive with nature fighting its way back across the margins of what once had been a house and a home – fungus, rot, weeds and small saplings on the march. The furniture had collapsed in on itself, fusty cushions split and mildew-speckled covers sagging over the wooden frames, mouldy bookshelves tumbled, once-bright pictures faded to nothing or obscured by black stains as they clung to the walls someone had once taken care hanging them on. There was a long low table in front of the ruined couch, sturdy enough to lie on. I said this to Storm, but she just shrugged.

In fact she only said one thing in all the time between climbing into the house in the gathering dusk, and then waiting until full dark fell across the overrun vegetation that had blurred the boundaries between the once neatly laid out gardens around us. She didn’t say anything as I said goodbye and told her again to stay put until I returned. It was only as I was climbing back out of the window that I felt a hand on my shoulder.

Maybe I should come? she said.

She didn’t sound enthusiastic. But then she didn’t look particularly keen on being left alone either. It was hard not to sympathise, but I didn’t trust her to be able to move silently like I could. So I gave her what I hoped was an encouraging smile and shook my head.

I’ll be better on my own, I said. And you’ll be safer here.

I knew she would have an argument ready, so I clapped her on the arm and quickly stepped out of the window, losing myself in the dark. I suppose it was a coward’s goodbye. But I still think it was the right thing to do. The house was safe, and I could find my way back to it.

It was also easy enough to find the strangers. Full dark had not dimmed the smell of the roasting meat, and the wind remained as it was, so I just crept silently into it, following my nose until my other senses kicked in.

I don’t think it was as much as a mile before I saw the reflection of the fire on the trees around it and heard the friendly crack and pop of the flames. There was a tall sharp-edged structure in front of the fire, a long rectangle that I first took to be one of the old stone church towers that seemed to stay upright long after more modern buildings had given up the ghost or been burst apart by trees and bushes. Because of this I couldn’t see the fire directly until I was much closer, but I also had the advantage of being able to approach unseen in the long shadow the tower threw across my way. When I did get to within a couple of hundred metres, I heard voices and the whinny and stamp of tethered horses beyond the tower, and then, as I tried to cross an open expanse of grass and burst tarmac as invisibly as I could, staying low and trying to slide over the sparse cover like a shadow, I saw sudden brightnesses blazing through holes in the tower. I stopped and spread myself on the ground among the low greenery, feeling the hard surface crunching beneath me, and wincing at the thought it might be heard by whoever was behind the fire station tower.

Because that’s what I recognised it as being. Not a church tower. We’d come across these towers before, Cat and me. For one long summer when I was about eight or nine we actually made our camp in an old fire station that still had a whole fire engine in it, red paint shaling off the corroding sheet metal beneath. I used to sit in the cab in the same way I sat in the tank and read or watch the wildlife beyond the open garage doors. And opposite the garage was a tower like this.

I could feel my pulse going faster as I realised that if I could get into this tower, I’d have the perfect place to spy on whoever might be camped below. It wasn’t a fear sort of speeding up. It was, and I’m still ashamed of it, excitement. Looking back I should at least have had the imagination to worry about whether one of the strangers wasn’t already in the tower. All I can say in my defence is that I had already logically decided that they were very unlikely to be Russians, and I was too intrigued by the chance to see more people.

I heard their voices quite clearly as I stealthed my way up to the base of the tower in the cover of the long slash of shadow thrown by the fire beyond. I couldn’t quite hear what they were saying, but it was not a collection of deep voices. Not like mine or the dead Russian’s. And there was laughter, which sounded light and as inviting as the smell of that roasting meat, not dark and threatening. So I cautiously pulled myself up and into the dank and musty smell in the darkness of the stairwell inside the tower. I then carefully took my bow off my back and left it and the arrows in the opening as I didn’t want to chance them rattling as I went up the stairs where they might well catch on something I couldn’t see.

The campfire threw alternating patches of shadow and light across the interior and as I climbed the zigzag flights of steps I took care to duck below the windowsills on the fire side and then stood up when on the other side of the tower where the light didn’t reach. Because I was being so careful with my footing, not wanting to kick or slip on something that might make a sound that would give me away, I found out the hatch to the roof was closed by banging my head sharply on it.

I staggered back, teeth clenched to keep the instinctive – and treacherous – yelp of pain betraying me to the voices below. I stood there for precarious beat, crouched on one leg, not daring to move as I held my breath and grimaced in the darkness, waiting to see if they had heard anything. I first imagined the gap in the conversation meant that they had, and then to my relief they burst out in laughter and just carried on talking. I allowed myself to rub my head, which was now throbbing and sweating with the shock of everything. And then I eased myself back down the stairs to the last window on the fire side of the tower and, keeping myself strictly to one side, hidden in the sliver of shadow, peered over the edge.

And this is what I saw: The Bear Shirt stranger and two women. I couldn’t see Bear Shirt’s face because it was at too steep an angle, shadowed by their hood, but the top definitely had the same bear’s head and the question on the front of it. And if that had not been enough proof, if I’d had a shred of doubt about there being two people wandering the empty world wearing exactly the same shirt, the dog clinched it. He was lying between Bear Shirt’s feet, panting at the heat from the fire in front of him. There was no question. It was Digger’s friend Jip, and he really had run off to reunite himself with Bear Shirt, but not just Bear Shirt, because there was a second dog, similar but a bit thinner who was asleep at his side.

The sight of the dogs worried me, in case they got my scent, but I checked the wind which was still rattling through the surrounding trees, and I was please to realise I was still downwind. The noise of the trees was not enough to mask the sound of the conversation going on between the three people sitting round the fire. I was also relieved to see it wasn’t a goat being roasted over it, but a deer. At least our missing Devil was out there somewhere, lost to us maybe, but also his give-away hobble hidden from them too.

The women were very different to each other. One was very old. She was the first old person I had ever seen. Her hair was so grey it was almost white, thick and tangled looking, pulled back from her face by a wide length of blue material that was like a sort of headband. The face was both wrinkled and drawn tight, the skin very white, with high cheekbones above which were eyes that were suddenly much younger than the face they sat in. It was like a young person wearing a mask was the thought I had at the time, though the firelight may have made her eyes seem to sparkle with more energy than she actually had, because I noticed she moved carefully, the way Cat had done when she cracked her ribs. I couldn’t decide if she was just old and creaky, or getting over a recent injury. Her face was a mixture of two things, one when at rest, the other when she smiled or laughed; one moment, at rest, it was severe, and then she spoke or laughed and it became engaging and warm, and drew you in. It was a good face. I think even if the world had been as crammed with other faces like it used to be, hers would have been one you’d note and remember.

The same went for the other woman who was much younger, closer to Cat’s age really, almost still a girl. She had scars, on her face and on her hands which I could see were slightly misshapen by the tight scar tissue. She was sharpening a knife, clearly waiting to carve meat from the roast, and she handled knife and stone as if the tightness clawing her hands was nothing, or at least something she was used to. Her hair was plaited into braids on either side of a darker skinned face that shared a jawline and a nose with the Bear, so I wondered if they were related. She reminded me of Cat too, not just because of her age, or because she had a similarly wiry body, always – like Cat’s – in motion, doing something, but because she too talked intensely and every now and then punctuated what she was saying with a slow grin that took you by surprise.

I couldn’t believe that they might be Russians. They were the opposite of the man I’d killed. I couldn’t imagine them doing the things Storm had described the others doing either. And like I said, not having had much experience of other people, I still didn’t think those who did bad things would be as easy and likeable as these three seemed to be. You could see they were close and that they liked each other, even as the two new women were quizzing Bear Shirt about something. I don’t know what it was because I arrived late in the conversation, but it was clearly a source of great incredulity to Scar Girl who finished sharpening the knife, cut a piece of meat off the deer and held it out to the Grey Hair on the point of it to taste.

Grey Hair picked it off the knife and then flinched and almost dropped it because it was so hot.

Pew-tan! she said. Say show!

It didn’t make sense to me but it made the others laugh as she juggled it from hand to hand to cool it. Then Scar Girl carved another slice and held it out to Bear Shirt to taste. Bear Shirt reached for it, and then Scar Girl pulled it back just out of reach, as if an important thought had just struck her.

So wait, she said. After everything he’d done, everything he’s stolen, all the cheating. All the damage, the boat… after all of that… you what? You decided to trust him? I mean, enough to what. Sit up all night, talking? Being friendly?

Not all night, said Bear Shirt, snatching the meat and eating it.