Read Online The Ice People by Maggie Gee - Free Book Online Page B

‘Finish?’
    I gesture feebly at my notebook. ‘Just started.’
    He points to the book, then his eyes, then back, then pulls a face of animal displeasure. ‘Reddit,’ he mouths. ‘Yerrch.’
    ‘I know, all right, but it gets –’
    ‘Nope.’ He mimes tearing my book apart. One of the pages does tear, slightly.
    ‘I’m going to write about the Doves, right. The
Doves,
get me? You like the Doves.’
    ‘Dying,’ he says, and crouches down beside me and stares at the floor. ‘The Doves, dying.’ Kit is actually crying.
    ‘No no,’ I say, encouragingly. ‘They just miss me. Their Uncle Solly. I’ve been too busy –’ His foot again, propelling me in the direction of the hangar where the Doves are kept.
    ‘You go today,’ I say, firmly. ‘I go tomorrow. Today, I write.’
    To my surprise, he goes off, hangdog. I didn’t expect that to be so easy. Normally I don’t write by day, but the last two days I have found a hiding place and written as if it would save my life, though I don’t suppose anything can save me. I mean to finish my story, though.
    I jog away, stiffly, trying to look young, trying to look tough and in command. I defecate in one of the pits. Hard and mingy, not satisfying. It’s the diet. Unless the boys have robbed a convoy there’s no fruit or veg except potatoes, which these kids can just about manage to grow, but most of them are rotten by this time of year and they come out of the fire either burnt or half raw. At least the cold stops the pits stinking. On the rare warm days, in the old midsummer, the air is suddenly black with flies. Not all the wild boys use the pits, but it’s a crime if you’re caught fouling, punishable with beating, and occasionally death, because some of the beaters don’t know when to stop.
    The Doves are supposed to be my daytime job, but for a few days I’m going to neglect them. Kit will cover for me, with some of the boys. They always like to play with the Doves, though play is becoming less satisfying as more of the Doves become …
moribund.
    (Such a comic word, round as a plum. Not one of these boys would recognise it. I long for someone who knows what words mean. My mother loved them; my father too. In the new Days, people don’t risk words. If you open your mouth, the ice blows in, hurting the teeth no dentists care for. Drying your throat. Piercing your soul. Filling your heart with loneliness. Best keep the old words close to your chest … They don’t hurt me if I write them down.)
    I jog purposefully over to the derelict shell that was once one of the multistorey carparks. Till a few months ago it was full of wild children shooting down the slopes on homemade skates and skateboards, but too many were killed, or it grew too cold. The winds that howled through became too much to bear, and now the skaters have moved elsewhere. There’s a tiny cupboard here, two metres square, smelling of damp, by an empty liftshaft. There is light to see by if I leave the door ajar, but it would be too dangerous to do that. I’m safe in the open, where many people know me, but no one’s safe if they’re caught alone. I close the door firmly and take out my candle, my treasured grey stump of life and light. Not much of it left, so I’ll have to hurry.
    I never stopped loving that bloody woman, however angry I felt with her. Of course I was angry; she was insane. How could we get married and live apart? Shouldn’t a woman want to live with her man? She lived with a woman, and had a male lover.
    I complained to anyone who’d listen. But people didn’t understand. It seemed I’d been living in a timewarp.
    I tried to take in what was going on. Behind my back, the world had been changing. Once I started looking, it was everywhere. Segging had spread into so much of life. Young women were beginning to live with women; men were trying to live with men. Colonies of men took apartment blocks together. Those with swimming pools were especially popular. For