asked about Hector. Because they daren’t. His name was erased from the register. He was expendable. That was the disease he was born with. Weren’t we all, in the Motherland? Except Mr. Gunnell. He had the foolish notion that he was exceptional. The frickwit.
Hans Fielder, the leader of the torture lounge, had left me, the untouchable, alone. Until, that is, the visit from the leather-coat man.
What I remember about Gramps after the Lushes went was that he looked older, more worried, with each day that passed. We were being watched. One thing bled into another. The wound kept oozing grief, no matter how many bandages of “it will be all right.”
In the evenings we listened to the radio. Gramps took to writing down what he wanted to say. Half pictures, half words. Only in our minds were we free to dream. The radio played and we believed it would hide our thoughts.
And footprints deep marked out new moons of Motherland . . .
Moon . . . ARO5 . . . SOL3 . . . ELD9.
Words. All meaningless words. I wanted to kill myself.
Gramps said, “Standish, don’t think about the past. We’ll do what we always did, before the Lushes came.”
What was that, then? Hector brought the light. All he left was the darkness.
Every night we would make out we were off to bed.
“Good night,” Gramps would shout into the room I refused to sleep in. We would sit on the edge of his bed together. Outside a wasp of a car buzzed up and down the road. Midnight, Gramps had worked out, was when the detectives in the wasp car had a break from their duties. Time for a pee, for a bite to eat. That was when Gramps and me would make our way quietly down to Cellar Street.
Before the war — which war, I don’t know, there’s been so blooming many, all won of course by the great Motherland — anyway before the wars, Gramps had been the senior scene painter at the big opera house in Zone One. Maybe there weren’t zones in those days, but that’s not the point. No, the point is that once, at the start of the wars, Gramps had painted airplanes on the ground. They looked from the sky like the real McCoy. After that war, the Motherland introduced the first program of re-education. Gramps was forced to attend it for painting those planes. Some of his friends refused to do it. Some were the wrong breed, wrong color, wrong nationality. They weren’t allowed a re-education. The Greenflies needed their maggot meat. As for Gramps, he passed the test. Just.
They — him, Gran, and Dad and Mum — were moved here just before I was born. Anyway, that’s another way by the by.
The reason I thought about Gramps being a scene painter was because of the wall he had built and painted at the bottom of Cellar Street. You see, Gramps had painted a perfect illusion of a perfect wall. It slid in tight, right next to the alien growth, a giant mushroom-like thing that shone with an unnatural light. It stank as bad as the lines of the Anthem of the Motherland.
Hidden in its pungent, fleshy folds was a small lock and if it was jiggled in a certain way the wall would slide open. Only when the wall was shut again did the lights flicker on in the secret chamber. They ran off an old battery that Mr. Lush had rigged up.
It was because of the painted wall that, after the Lushes were taken, Gramps took to working outside in the front garden. He looked as if he was pruning the white roses. Secretly, he was putting in a warning system to tell us if anyone was in the house while we were down in the storeroom in Cellar Street.
I tell you this for a bagful of humbugs, it was eerily deserted under those houses. All we could hear down there was the conversation of rats. A very stubborn thing is your common brown rat. I often wondered how it was the rats became fat when we were so very lean.
A week ago, I came home from school, lost in a daydream. This one involved our flying saucer landing on planet Juniper. To me it was like having a cinema in my head. I could see Hector
Hans Fielder, the leader of the torture lounge, had left me, the untouchable, alone. Until, that is, the visit from the leather-coat man.
What I remember about Gramps after the Lushes went was that he looked older, more worried, with each day that passed. We were being watched. One thing bled into another. The wound kept oozing grief, no matter how many bandages of “it will be all right.”
In the evenings we listened to the radio. Gramps took to writing down what he wanted to say. Half pictures, half words. Only in our minds were we free to dream. The radio played and we believed it would hide our thoughts.
And footprints deep marked out new moons of Motherland . . .
Moon . . . ARO5 . . . SOL3 . . . ELD9.
Words. All meaningless words. I wanted to kill myself.
Gramps said, “Standish, don’t think about the past. We’ll do what we always did, before the Lushes came.”
What was that, then? Hector brought the light. All he left was the darkness.
Every night we would make out we were off to bed.
“Good night,” Gramps would shout into the room I refused to sleep in. We would sit on the edge of his bed together. Outside a wasp of a car buzzed up and down the road. Midnight, Gramps had worked out, was when the detectives in the wasp car had a break from their duties. Time for a pee, for a bite to eat. That was when Gramps and me would make our way quietly down to Cellar Street.
Before the war — which war, I don’t know, there’s been so blooming many, all won of course by the great Motherland — anyway before the wars, Gramps had been the senior scene painter at the big opera house in Zone One. Maybe there weren’t zones in those days, but that’s not the point. No, the point is that once, at the start of the wars, Gramps had painted airplanes on the ground. They looked from the sky like the real McCoy. After that war, the Motherland introduced the first program of re-education. Gramps was forced to attend it for painting those planes. Some of his friends refused to do it. Some were the wrong breed, wrong color, wrong nationality. They weren’t allowed a re-education. The Greenflies needed their maggot meat. As for Gramps, he passed the test. Just.
They — him, Gran, and Dad and Mum — were moved here just before I was born. Anyway, that’s another way by the by.
The reason I thought about Gramps being a scene painter was because of the wall he had built and painted at the bottom of Cellar Street. You see, Gramps had painted a perfect illusion of a perfect wall. It slid in tight, right next to the alien growth, a giant mushroom-like thing that shone with an unnatural light. It stank as bad as the lines of the Anthem of the Motherland.
Hidden in its pungent, fleshy folds was a small lock and if it was jiggled in a certain way the wall would slide open. Only when the wall was shut again did the lights flicker on in the secret chamber. They ran off an old battery that Mr. Lush had rigged up.
It was because of the painted wall that, after the Lushes were taken, Gramps took to working outside in the front garden. He looked as if he was pruning the white roses. Secretly, he was putting in a warning system to tell us if anyone was in the house while we were down in the storeroom in Cellar Street.
I tell you this for a bagful of humbugs, it was eerily deserted under those houses. All we could hear down there was the conversation of rats. A very stubborn thing is your common brown rat. I often wondered how it was the rats became fat when we were so very lean.
A week ago, I came home from school, lost in a daydream. This one involved our flying saucer landing on planet Juniper. To me it was like having a cinema in my head. I could see Hector
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