Bar None Page 2

  "Don't speak," I said. I knew that she heard me, though she showed no sign. "You'll never say the right thing."

  After a dozen rapid heartbeats Ashley turned and stared at me. The sun allowed us that contact now, still hot, still blazing the ground dry, but permitting us to see each other without its interrupting glare. "I had a moment, but it's gone. That's okay. I like mysteries. Can I buy you a drink?"

  I smiled and held out my glass.

  She sniffed the empty glass, closed her eyes. "Abbot."

  And there was no way I could ever fall out of love again.

  Two: Old Peculier

  I am exhausted. I've had more exercise since the plagues than in the two decades preceding that catastrophe, but I am still on the wrong side of forty, and my body is far less forgiving than it once was. My legs are burning from running up and down the tower, and as I stumble down the steep path my shins feel as though they're being sliced with a blunt knife.

  I can hear the motorcycle engine above my laboured breathing. It is close, probably approaching the long, overgrown lane that leads eventually to the Manor's gravel path. Three minutes away? Two?

  Jessica appears at the Manor's rear door, gesturing with her hand. "Come on!" she shouts. I can see the Irishman behind her, face clouded by concern. There is no sign of Cordell. Probably at one of the front windows with our shotgun.

  "Coming as fast as I can!" I say. I run past the pond built into a terrace in the hillside, sent on my way by several splashes as things jump back in. The wildlife here is diverse and fascinating, and I have spent long, spring afternoons sitting by the pond drinking ale. It seems to be a good venue for my memories.

  I keep glancing at the long curving driveway that leads to the entrance between rows of old trees. We never bothered closing the cast iron gates, even though Cordell suggested it several times. Why bother? There's no one else, Jacqueline whispered. Now I wish we had listened to him. Just in case, Cordell said. Easy enough to open them if and when we do need to leave, and they're strong. They'd withstand . . . But no one wanted to hear any more. Withstand a lorry ramming them, he said. We all remembered those final days of martial law and curfew, NBC-suited soldiers shooting any civilians who dared sneeze or hold their heads, the Prime Minister on TV telling us why he'd had to nuke London, the mass graves, the burning. And we all wanted to think that was in the past.

  As I pass into the shadow of the Manor—warm to cool, as though someone now stands between me and the sun—something appears between the huge stone gate posts. The motorbike roars, and gravel sprays behind it like heavy rain.

  I run past Jessica, offering her a smile. It does not cool her frown. "Cordell!" I shout. I know he'll be the one most likely to open fire first.

  "He's in the front room," the Irishman says. He's standing out in the hallway beyond the kitchen, worrying at a loose quarry tile with his heavy boots. He has a knife strapped to his belt, but his hand strays nowhere close.

  I run past him and pelt into the living room. It stinks of old books. "Cordell!" I say again, pausing, leaning over and resting my hands on my knees. I look up and see him standing by the window, shotgun resting in the crook of his left arm.

  "One man on a bike," he says. "Not wearing a helmet. Long blonde hair." He glances back briefly, and I'm comforted by the control in his eyes. He's not likely to blow the man from his bike without provocation.

  "Jacqueline?" I ask.

  "In the sitting room. She's got the .22."

  I nod. The air rifle is an old single shot model, primed by pumping the barrel. We use it for hunting pigeons and ducks, and none of us are a very good shot. If she does use it, she'll have to get him in the eye to cause any real damage.

  "I've told her to follow my lead." Cordell sees my concern, hears it in my laboured breathing.

  The bike circles the dry fountain in front of the Manor. The rider takes it slow, showing that he is not a threat, and also that he's unafraid. His hair is indeed long and blonde, tied back in several places with what look like metal bands. He rides in shirtsleeves, and his heavy forearms are dark with exposure to the sun, ridged with prominent veins. No tattoos. No piercings that I can see. No sunglasses. It's an old model motorbike, a real antique, and I find the grumbling engine strangely comforting. Everything is very quiet nowadays. It's good to hear this. It's almost normal, and yet this man is so far from normal that I feel cold.

  "What is it?" I ask, and my strange wording provokes no comment from Cordell.

  We stand together and watch the biker come to a halt. He silences the bike and kicks down its stand. Then he dismounts, stretches, twists the discomfort from his back, yawns, and turns to look at the Manor for the first time.

  We lock eyes. He knows exactly where we are, and he probably knew the second he drove in between the open gates.

  Maybe he saw me seeing him from the tower, I think, but it's a crazy idea. He'd been a mile away at least, and I was the one hidden away.

  "He's looking right at me," Cordell says, and from across the hallway I hear Jacqueline gasp out loud.

  "Where's he been?" I say. "I thought we were the only ones."

  "We've talked about that," Cordell says, and we have. About how we cannot be the only ones left, how there must be other survivors, why we did not die, why we were spared. And yet we have heard or seen nothing on the airwaves for months, no sign of life from the dead city beyond the river, and the sky is clear and blue, unhazed by smoke or the exhaust from aircraft. The idea that we're the last ones left is faintly ridiculous, but much of the time it's also the only thing I can believe.

  If there are others, why haven't we met them by now?

  "He's not one of them," I say. "One of those flying things. From above the city."

  "I've never seen them." He's sticking to his usual story, though I'm certain he's lying.

  The man approaches the front door and I hear Jacqueline dash into the hall. I rush out to be with her—I can never quite tell what mood she's in, how dangerous she can be—but she is already reaching for the door locks. Jessica stands just behind her, and the Irishman is back in the shadows beneath the staircase. The most optimistic of all of us, he seems to be the most afraid.

  Jacqueline has left the air rifle leaning against the timber wall panelling and I snatch it up. It wouldn't do any good, I think, but I try to ignore the idea.

  Cordell is beside me, still cradling the shotgun.

  "Do you really think we should do that?" the Irishman whispers from under the stairs, and the door opens inward.

  The man stands there for a while, letting the sun spill in around him. His shadow leans out before him, stretching across the timber floor and pooling around my feet. He smiles. "Afternoon," he says. "Any chance of a beer?"

  "Who are you?" Jessica says. There is no trace of threat or fear in her voice.

  "My name's Michael," the man says. "At least, it is today."

  "Just today?" I ask. He looks at me and his attention is intense.

  "I left it behind six months ago," the man says. "When I need to feel as though I still belong to the past, I give myself a new name. Today, it's Michael. If you'll humour me—listen to something I have to tell you all—perhaps it'll stay Michael for a day or two longer. I hope so." He glances down at the floor as though staring at his own shadow. "I'm tired of being lost."

  "That beer," Jessica says. "We have some. Not much. Not much left at all, and we don't like to . . ."

  Michael nods. "I know what you mean. I've been into some places, and it's stealing from the dead. It tastes bad. And it's all going off."

  "All of it?"

  "Everything. All bad."

  "You just rode out of the city," I say. "I saw you."

  He nods. "You have a good memory," he says, and for some reason I know he's thinking of Ashley.

  I shift nervously, shifting the air rifle. It slips along my arm and feels cold all over again. But I don't, I think. I have no memory. Only her pain, and her tears. I can't see her un
less I drink, and that's no way to be.

  "What were you doing down there?" Cordell asks.

  "Holding my breath. It's good to breathe again."

  "You're scaring me," Jacqueline whispers. Jessica reaches out and touches her shoulder.

  "I'm sorry," Michael says. "This is all so strange. I haven't spoken to anyone for a long time."

  "Where have you been?" I ask. "Is there anyone else? Are we the only ones? How did you know we were here?"

  Michael smiles and steps forward, entering the Manor uninvited. "Any chance of that beer, and we can have a good long chat?"

  I glance at Cordell, then turn and look at the others. None of us says anything, but in that silence the decision is made. "Of course," I say. "And you must be hungry."

  Michael's eyes widen and he touches his stomach. "Ravenous."

  We've talked about the things we occasionally see above the city, floating there in warm currents, sometimes dipping down and rising again with something dark and vague clasped in their claws, or feet, or whatever they have. We all seem to see something slightly different, and Cordell claims to see nothing at all. My impression is of small, winged people, flying with staccato movements like something from a Ray Harryhausen animation. Jacqueline sees large birds, Jessica sees moths, and the Irishman says he sees only shadows, drifting up and down like whiffs of smoke or ash from some distant, unseen fire.

  We don't know what they are, or where they come from, or what they're doing. But they seem relatively harmless. And sometimes I think they're ghosts, projected there by each of us because we cannot bear seeing the city so still and silent.

  Michael does not resemble anything we have seen. I step back as he enters. His shadow passes over my legs just before Jacqueline closes the door, but I feel nothing.

  We take him into the dining room and he makes himself at home. Sits, sighs, looks around. He is confident, but there's also an underlying gratitude, a look here and there that says, I am so glad I found you all. Perhaps the confidence is a front, but I think not. We all handle survival in our own way, and it seems to me that Michael thinks he is one of the lucky ones.

  Cordell and Jessica make dinner, though neither of them stays out of the room for more than a couple of minutes at a time. They don't want to miss anything. We all appreciate that, and while they cook we talk about the Manor, what it was like when we found it, how we managed to stock some food and drink before the plagues hit their worst. None of us mentions how low the stock is running, and though Jessica talks at length about the gardens and how much food she is planting, we all know that it can never be enough.

  "So who's in charge?" Michael asks. He looks at me, then away again. Glances at Jessica. His gaze rests on Cordell.

  "None of us," Jacqueline says. "We make our decisions as a group. There are stronger ones, and . . . those of us not so strong. But we're all survivors together."

  "Yes," Michael says, looking at his hands in his lap. His fingers are entwined. "That's good to hear."

  Jessica comes in from the kitchen. "Almost ready," she says. We take our seats around the table, and I wonder whether Michael will expect one of us to say grace.

  Cordell and Jessica bring in the food, several steaming pots of vegetables and hot dog sausages with fried onions and mushrooms. The smell is mouth watering, and Michael's eyes go wide. "You really are surviving here," he says.

  "We're doing more than that," I say. I look at Cordell and he nods. "Excuse me for a few moments." I leave the dining room and breathe a sigh of relief when I'm on my own once again.

  The hallway is quiet, and now that the sun is sinking the shadows stretch out, friendly shapes that I have come to know well over the past few months. You really are surviving here, Michael said, and he is right. But I am also remembering. That is what my survival is for me, a process of recollecting and honouring, of creating my life with Ashley over and over again.

  I seem to have forgotten so much over such a short space of time, and digging for the memories makes me feel more and more guilty. I still cry, but it's at the idea of my dead wife rather than a particular thought. Walking the gardens, listening to nature, I see and hear only her final moments of pain. Everything else is shadow.

  But with a drink in my hand, things change.

  I pick up the big torch and go down into the cellar. It's as large as the footprint of the mansion, split into several rooms that are mostly filled with rotten furniture and other junk. But the first room is different, and it's the only one we use. When we congregated here it was fully stocked with dozens of ales and wines, and after that first week it played a big part in our decision to stay. There isn't much left now, but I bring up a crate of the good stuff, a selection of bottles that fills me with an ache of nostalgia and the thrill of knowing that I will soon be remembering Ashley.

  I hurry back upstairs, and as I walk into the dining room the subdued chatter ceases.

  "I do hope you're not a lager drinker," I say. Michael eyes the bottles as I place them on the table, and grins.

  We eat the meal, and drink, and the chat comes easily. He tells us something of where he has been and what he has seen, but for some reason that seems unimportant. As darkness falls outside we move from the dining room to the living room, and Cordell ventures to the basement for more beer. We are all drinking, though we know that supplies are running low. None of us has yet dared voice the fear of what may happen when we run out. I can barely think beyond that day, and I'm sure it is the same for everyone. Beer is our drug, our life, and for many of us our saviour.

  Michael seems unconcerned. He says that there is much more of everything. There's something about his eyes that makes me think there's a distance there, some defence—intentional or not—that means he's slightly removed from what he's saying, and how we respond.

  Once, I see his eyes turn watery. He looks down at his hands and blinks rapidly for a second or two, as if trying to dislodge a speck of grit. He blinks the tears away.

  Relaxing in one of the wide, soft chairs that make the living room our favourite place in the Manor, Michael is the centre of attention and the odd one out. He tells us about how he found the old motorbike idling by the side of the road, petrol tank half-full, and how he turned it off and spent the next six hours searching for its owner. The ditches on either side of the road were empty, as were the fields, and although he found six bodies in a farm building half a mile distant, they were all old and decayed. "And there were fat rats," he says. "Dead cows, skeletal chickens, fat rats."

  Someone pops another lid from a bottle of beer, and that metallic snick becomes the mark between one conversation and the next.

  Michael mentions that he has seen other people. I pause with a bottle half-raised to my lips. "But they're not like you," he says.

  "How do you mean?" I ask. The fire crackles, and a log spits as a bubble of sap explodes. Jacqueline, sitting close to the fire so that there are no shadows about her, reaches out one lazy foot and stomps on the ember sizzling into the carpet.

  "Different," Michael says. "Moved on."

  I don't like what he is saying, nor his tone of voice, and I ask, "What in the name of fuckery does 'moved on' mean?"

  He looks right at me. He has been calm and casual all this time. But now I am the centre of his attention, and it feels as though I am being scrutinised by something massive and way, way beyond my comprehension. "I'm not sure yet," he says. "Isn't that wonderful?"

  I look away and take another swig of beer. I close my eyes. The conversation continues, but I think of Michael's watery eyes and the sense that his gaze could bore straight to the centre of my fractured soul.

  Theakston's Old Peculier, deep and dark and heavy, a smooth roasty beer with a hint of chocolate and an unmistakeable vinous aftertaste, a complex beer, rich and powerful and as familiar to my tongue as the taste of Ashley's skin, the hint of her breath, the tang of sweat on her neck as we make love. Theakston's Old Peculier, the brown bottle still wet and cold even though w
e had been sitting in Paul's back garden for over an hour, watching him cook and listening to his band's new demo, and Ashley was beside me, drinking her own drink and making me the centre of her universe by never looking at me. That's how I marked the depth of our love: we could be together so completely without touching or saying anything. We breathed the same air.

  Paul cooked steak and chicken quarters and pork loin chops on the gas barbeque. I could feel the heat of it from where I sat, but even on that hot summer day it was not uncomfortable. He sprinkled spiced oil over the steak and stood back when a gush of flame licked upward for a few seconds, sealing the meat. The pork was thickly coated in a peanut glaze, slowly bubbling and turning dark.

  "You honestly think they'll close it?" Ashley said. We had been talking about the recent outbreak of bird flu in France, and the Prime Minister's comments about closing the channel tunnel. There had been a lot of piss-taking in the media about that: a threat from the skies, so the PM proposes protecting his nation by closing a tunnel beneath the sea. But as ever, Paul had theories about it that seemed to hold water. He spent a lot of time on the 'net, mixing with other conspiracy-theory fanatics and picking up information from sources I wouldn't even know how to find. Most people thought he was plain nuts. I'd known him long enough to know that was not entirely true.

  More often than not, Paul was right. Ashley had only known him for as long as she'd known me, almost a year. I believed she was beginning to see what Paul was all about.

  "I'm sure they will," he said, turning a steak. "It's just a matter of time. The flu's already jumped from bird to human in fifteen cases. Now if it starts getting passed from person to person, we'll have to take advantage of our island state. And an island doesn't have a direct link to the mainland. The tunnel's always been a bad idea. I know a guy who worked on it, old bloke down the pub, and he and I have had lots of chats about it. It's common knowledge they left the tunnelling machines buried in the walls down there, and most people believe it's because it would have been too expensive to bring them back out."