Children of the Dust (12 page)

'Is this your first child?' Bill asked.

Catherine laughed.

I've had seven,' she said. 'But they all died except Lilith. But I pray each day that this baby will survive, for Johnson won't live long enough to father another.'

Bill looked at her in horror.

'You're
married
to Johnson?'

'Since I was fourteen,' said Catherine.

'And how old was he?'

Catherine shrugged.

'Forty maybe? Does it matter? I was mature and lived with him and we cared for each other. It was natural to mate. What else could we have done?'

Ophelia stared at her. The loveliness of the valley, the sanctity of its life, fled to a hideous reality. It was horrible, unthinkable . . . sexual intercourse between a fourteen-year-old girl and a forty-year-old man . . . breeding like animals, having no choice, pregnancy after pregnancy, and all the children dying. Catherine's great swollen stomach seemed suddenly obscene, the result of one more sordid act of conception. Ophelia's lips set in a prim line of disgust as she walked away down the track. At least in the bunker they had kept morality alive. And the green growing fields ended abruptly in a compound of dust.

Nothing beautiful remained, just battered glasshouses, a filthy cottage and ramshackle barns, and the settlement beyond. It was a scene of absolute squalor. Hundreds of wooden shacks with polythene windows and rusting corrugated roofs faced across the sun-baked spaces where the army truck was parked. Garden sheds, she heard her father saying. And people actually lived in them! Over seven hundred people, Catherine said, although most of them were away in the hills picking bilberries, or quarrying for stone for the new communal living hall. The stink was terrible. Flies buzzed around the primitive latrines and rats frisked across the garbage dump, white eyes winking in the light.

It was no wonder Catherine's babies died!

No one could live in conditions like these.

The land came first, Catherine said, food and necessities before material advancement and academic learning. They would not be living like this for ever, she said, and pointed out the foundation trenches for the new building. Meanwhile among the germs and filth a woman sang and small children cried. Fowls bathed in the dust and goats chewed their cud in the wooden shade of the sheds before the valley grew green again, curved with the stream between hills where the bright woods brooded, and the willowherb bloomed sweet.

A mixture of feelings tore Ophelia apart. She saw the coexistence of hope and despair, beauty and ugliness, the profane and the sublime. Caught between wonder and loathing she walked through the reek of dung and flowers to stand beside Dwight in the shadow of the army truck.

'What do you think of it?' he asked her.

'I think it stinks!' Ophelia said savagely.

'Figuratively? Or literally?'

'Both! It makes me feel absolutely sick! At least we've managed to maintain a decent standard of living! At least we're still capable of civilized behaviour!'

'Like coming to steal their cattle?' said Dwight. 'You call that civilized? We're dinosaurs in a bunker! We deserve to become extinct!'

Ophelia stared at him.

'What do you mean?' she said.

'What I said!' he retorted. 'And what did you expect? Blake's Jerusalem?'

In the kitchen Dwight pumped water into a cracked china sink and sluiced his face as Ophelia followed her father into the living room. Just for a moment, after the blinding sunlight outside, she could see nothing. But slowly the room took shape . . . chairs and a table, an old-fashioned fireplace, ragged curtains at the window and a dirt-encrusted carpet on the floor, books stacked in every available space. The air was heavy with the smell of books.  And in the midst of them, reclining on a battered sofa, was a bearded man, a skin-and-bone shape clad in nothing but a pair of faded denim shorts. 

'This is Johnson,' Catherine said fondly.

He looked so old, many years older than Ophelia's father. His scalp, like Catherine's, was covered with festering sores. He tried to rise but his strength failed. Breath rattled in his throat as he sank back against the cushions. One skeletal hand extended in greeting as Bill stepped forward.

'My father,' said Catherine.

Johnson coughed and nodded.

His teeth were gone.

But his voice was strong and sure.

'We've met before, I think, but I forget your name. Two boxes of pansies, wasn't it?'

Tansies for thoughts,' Bill quoted. 'Just call me Bill. And this is Ophelia, my other daughter.'

'I thought she was Sarah,' Catherine explained.

Johnson smiled.

'The fair Ophelia,' he said. 'How beautiful you are. I had forgotten how beautiful the human face could be.'

Ophelia wanted to hate him. She wanted to hate him for all he had done to Catherine, for all the corruption she had found in the heart of this valley. But he was dying, and Catherine was a woman now. Twenty-eight, she had told her father. Their hands touched and his eyes softened with affection. He called her his darling Kate, and asked her to make some tea. He seemed to radiate a kind of inner light, a transparency of warmth and love it was impossible to hate.

'First,' said Catherine, 'I must take Ophelia upstairs and find her a bed.'

'She's ill?' Johnson asked anxiously.

'It's only travel sickness,' Ophelia said.

'Come,' said Catherine, and held out her hand.

Ophelia followed her reluctantly, up a dim wooden stairway and into an upper room. Dusty sunlight filtered through the grimy window and the crumpled sheets on a vast double bed were stained and torn. Peeling wallpaper showed a pattern of fading flowers. From a chest-of-drawers Catherine took out clean linen, stripped off the bed covers, winced in pain, straightened and clutched her back.

'You had better let me do that,' Ophelia said.

She remade the bed as Catherine cleared the floor of soiled clothes and found her a nightdress. It was blue nylon with tattered lace edges.

'It's my best,' said Catherine. 'But you're welcome to borrow it. The bathroom is next door. There's septic tank drainage and a flush toilet, the only one on the site. When Lilith returns I'll ask her to make you a cure for your sickness. I'll just go and fetch you a glass of water.'

'You shouldn't be waiting on anyone in your condition,' Ophelia told her.

Catherine smiled.

'It's a perfectly normal condition for a woman, and I've Lilith to help me when she gets home. You lie down and rest.'

'You're the one who should be resting,' Ophelia objected.

Catherine sighed.

'It wouldn't make any difference,' she said. 'I've been through it enough times before. The little one's fate has nothing to do with rest and nourishment. It's genetics, Johnson says. We're genetically damaged, you see? Lilith laid the last one outside in the snow. Better a quick death than weeks of suffering. The poor little thing was too deformed to live for very long and Lilith always sees what chance of life a baby has. Sometimes I think she sees too much, but Johnson says we have to heed her, however hard it seems.'

It was horrible! Everything about this place was horrible! Lilith had killed her own mother's child and Ophelia did not want to meet her. She wanted to go home, back to the bunker, blot out everything she had heard and seen. Her head ached violently. Her stomach churned, and voices murmured in the rooms below.

'Will you ask Daddy to bring my water?' Ophelia said. 'I want to talk to him.'

Catherine nodded, opened the windows, drew the curtains, and went downstairs. Ophelia undressed, put on the blue nylon nightdress and lay on the bed. The clean sheets smelled of lavender. Sleepy afternoon sounds of birds and children drifted in from outside, and the curtains fluttered in the breeze. Cool shade surrounded her. She wanted to sleep but she had to wait for her father. She had to tell him that no matter what happened, no matter what the punishment was, she wanted to go home, back to the bunker, away from this cruel outside world which she could not bear.

When Ophelia awoke the room was dim with shadows. It must have been evening by the smells of smoke and cooking, the noise and bustle of the settlement outside. But the room contained its own silence and she was suddenly aware that she was not alone. Ophelia turned her head. A skinny flaxen-haired girl stood beside her bed with a cup in her hand. In the dusky half-light Ophelia could not see her clearly, just the pale oval of her face, the smudges of her eyes, a wraith-like figure in a shapeless grey dress. Ophelia sat up.

'I asked Daddy to bring my water,' she said.

The girl stared at her, unseen eyes taking her in. She pointed to the bedside table where a glass of water stood, then thrust the cup into Ophelia's hands and gestured her to drink.

'What is it?' Ophelia asked suspiciously.

The gesture was repeated, and Ophelia drank . . . liquid that was strong and bitter and as cold as ice. A herbal brew. Something to cure the sickness, Catherine had said. It tasted horrible, but the still imperious gaze of the girl stayed fixed on her face, ruthlessly commanding her to finish every last drop. Then she took back the cup and turned to go. Light from the passageway touched her eyes, the blank whiteness of the congenitally blind. Radiation damage. She had obviously been born dumb as well as blind. Just for a moment Ophelia pitied her until the girl paused in the doorway and looked back. Fear crawled through the nerves of her stomach. She got the feeling that the girl was not blind at all, that she could see everything Ophelia was, and the pity was all on her.

'Are you Lilith?' she asked.

And the girl nodded her head.

Morning sun lay bright outside the window but sleep sucked at Ophelia's mind and she had to struggle to open her eyes. Her father was shaking her, ordering her to wake, trying to tell her something. Cattle and childbirth and Colonel Allison were all mixed up together. She was drugged and dozy, unable to understand. He had to shake her again and make her sit up.

'Are you listening?' asked Bill.

'Lilith,' muttered Ophelia.

'She's downstairs. Catherine's in labour and Colonel Allison is on his way. I want you to keep an eye on Dwight. He's all steamed up and likely to do something stupid. Johnson and I are going to try reason, and Dwight's not in the mood for that. You'll have to keep him out of the way . . . take him for a walk, or something.'

'But what about the cattle?' Ophelia asked.

'I've just told you!' said Bill. 'What's the matter with you? They're milk cows mostly, and in-calf heifers. We couldn't get them away because there's nowhere to drive them to, nowhere else with enough grass to feed a herd that size. We got the stud bulls away last night but the rest are still here.' Bill tossed her clothes on the bed. 'Just take care of Dwight,' he said. 'That's all I ask.'

'I want to go home,' Ophelia stated.

'When this is over.'

'Is that a promise?'

'Of course,' Bill said impatiently. 'I already promised your mother. There's work to do at the bunker and you don't want to stay here, do you?'

He went away and Ophelia sighed happily, lay back against the pillows and closed her eyes. Erica had made Bill promise, and they would be going home. She did not care what happened now. Maybe she had never really cared, not even if Catherine
was
her sister. The problems of the outsiders were not her problems. They had problems of their own back at the bunker and that was where Ophelia belonged, Dwight too. There was something she had to do about Dwight . . . something her father had told her which she could not remember because all she wanted to
do was sleep, and sleep and sleep.

Downstairs someone was screaming. Ophelia shot out of bed, grabbed her underwear and overall and started to dress. Catherine was having the baby and she had to help, Bill had said. Her head was so muzzy she could hardly think. She went to the window and breathed in the chilly morning air.

It was still early. The sky was changing from pearly pink to blue, the glasshouses misted with condensation, the bean fields sparkling with dew. Johnson and her father were going slowly up the track and the settlement was coming awake, women collecting firewood from the stack, men emptying the lavatory buckets, and a solitary child drawing water from the well.

Ophelia stared at him, a stark naked little boy of six or seven with bulbous joints and rickety legs. He seemed to be carrying something on his shoulders, a lolling fleshy growth the size of a human head. And then she saw that it
was
a head, a second head attached to a second neck, but only partly formed, a hideous foetal thing with a bulging brain. In pity and revulsion Ophelia turned away and went downstairs.

Lilith was sitting on the sofa where Johnson had lain. She sat with her hands in her lap as if she were waiting, an evil child who killed her mother's babies and put sleeping potions in people's drinks. Behind the closed sitting-room door Catherine moaned in pain and Ophelia knew what Lilith was waiting for. She went through to the kitchen where saucepans of water simmered on the wood-burning stove. Dwight was seated at the table eating bread and jam and he did not even look at her.

'There's a boy outside,' Ophelia began.

'I saw him,' said Dwight.

'It made me feel sick.'

'According to the midwife they're all born deformed in one way or another,' Dwight told her. 'She's in there now seeing to your sister.'

Ophelia helped herself to bread and jam.

'Lilith killed the last baby,' she said. 'She left it outside in the snow to die.'

'Poor kid,' said Dwight. 'What strength she must have.'

'She murdered it!' Ophelia said.

'Kinder,' said Dwight. 'Johnson told me last night. Not murder in their eyes, but mercy killing. Apparently they've practised it since the beginning. Adults too, once they reach the last stages of dying.'

He turned his head as Lilith entered the kitchen.

'Hi, Lilith. How's it going?'

And the horror smiled in answer to her name.

In the bright daylight Ophelia could see her quite clearly, her white-fair hair hanging straight and long, and pale downy hairs on her face and arms, almost like fur. She definitely was not blind. White eyes with black pin-prick pupils fixed her with a cold repelling stare before Lilith took the saucepan from the stove and carried it away. Once again Ophelia felt the fear. She had seen those eyes before in rats, and sheep, and rabbits. She recognized the significance.