Chapter Fifty
Lost
Malcolm Reed
The morning light slices like a razorblade between my eyelids as I part them.
"Mornin', Stuart," says Grandmother gently, still carrying on with the old charade. "Drink a few mouthfuls of this. It'll make you feel better."
I have no will to resist. I take the cup and down the contents. It could be cyanide for all I know. Or care.
When it's finished, I lay my head back down and stare into nothing.
I could go back to the Resistance now. Surely they'll have some work for a man who doesn't care if he lives or dies. They won't have to mollycoddle me any more, and that's for certain.
The misery of my body, rebelling against what I ladled into it last night, is an utter irrelevance. My whole being is consumed by the magnitude of my loss.
Liz. Liz. Liz. When you're in pain, sometimes your pulse affects it. It hits you in rhythmic waves, drubbing against your heart. Grief is doing that to me now. Every thud feels as if it must finally pulverise the target into cardiac arrest, but it doesn't happen.
"When you're feelin' up to it, guess you'll want to see where we put them," Grandmother goes on softly, at last.
Not in a church, o dear god, not in a church. There's a church of sorts – well, that's what they call it, anyway; actually it's just another half-ruined building that someone knocked a hole in the wall of at one end and hung a bell there. With official religions being outlawed it's rare to get anyone visiting, but the religiously-minded get together now and again and read prayers, and that's where the 'hatching, matching and despatching' parts of the local community life get attended to, such as they are. I doubt if any of it would be deemed seditious even by the most fanatically-minded imperial inquisitor, and so it carries on, giving what spiritual comfort it can for those who believe.
And like most churches, it has a graveyard. No smooth lawns, no marble headstones, just a few wooden crosses or maybe a crudely carved plaque, and the only flowers are the ones whose seeds blow in from the desert and germinate. People around here don't have the money to spare for extravagant arrangements bought only to wither and die.
"There's a shelf out there where she used to like to sit an' look out across the desert. People came an' helped carry stones to cover her good. She was well respected aroun' here, your wife. Made herself loved. 'Little 'Lainie', they called her."
'Little 'Lainie'. Of course. They never knew her real name. Oh, dear god. I know the shelf, we used to sit there in the evenings and hold hands. We made love there a few times. She told me she sat there even after I'd gone, looking north towards the rail junction, waiting for me to come home.
Oh, dear god.
'Little 'Lainie'.
And the ... and ...
I'm screaming with loss, clutching at her hands. She's so old, the bones are as thin as a sparrow's claws, but she sustains my grip, uncomplaining.
Liz is dead.
=/\=
Later in the day – much later – we go out to the shelf. I don't want to, but I have to. I have to see that long, carefully laid pile of desert rocks tucked in at the back of it, with the already wizened corpses of flowers lying here and there where they were slid in among the stones, frail offerings laid only to bake under the desert sun.
The villagers did a good job. Not much short of a bulldozer would move this lot. Grandmother tells me someone will make a plaque, and I mumble some kind of acknowledgement. Not that I give a damn, but it shows their respect. Liz deserved that, and so much more she never got.
With the tact she's a master of, Grandmother leaves me here. I slide the carved wooden rose in among the stones, and then I sit on the edge of the ledge where we always sat, and I feel so alone I can't imagine there's anyone else in the universe.
