At the Edge of the Game (10 page)

The government
speaks of contingency plans. I think that the only real plan is to get the hell
out of the country before it’s too late, before everyone tries to get out all
at once.

Problem is,
things aren’t much better anywhere within easy reach. The east coast of North
America has its own climatic disaster to deal with. The UK, northern France,
Scandinavia, central Europe – same problems as us. The Mediterranean – not so
bad there. What shall we do, freeze here or pitch a tent in a crowded field in
the country of Oc and live off Red Cross handouts?

Helen is hard to
convince about getting out. She listens to Heathshade, who is always so bloody
sure of what he thinks about everything. ‘A bit of cold never hurt anyone. It’s
fucking winter. What do people expect?’

I finger the
two social welfare cards in my pocket, worth more than money in this world of
rationing. Equally vital is this notarised letter confirming that I’m her
partner so I can collect in her stead. How well the system works in practice
remains to be seen.

They never took
the Christmas lights down in here. Wires sag and sway like dead creepers,
abandoned clothes-line, the rigging of a ghost ship. Not very festive at all,
much like Christmas itself.

Snow stopped
Helen getting down to her parents in Waterford. She took out her frustration on
me. What with the shortages, Christmas dinner was sausages and oven chips. Depressing
fare at the best of times.

Not that
Christmas is high on my list of interests. My seventeenth Christmas involved
icy asphalt, crushed metal, pulverised tissue. A New Year’s visit to the
graveyard which inaugurated my life as an orphan.

Wish I wasn’t
standing behind these three shabby delinquents. Two men, one woman, I think.
The red, puffy faces atop those crumbling frames are disconcertingly
non-specific where gender, age, and even race are concerned. They squint up and
down the line, eyes peeled for the law. Well they might. The homeless don’t
qualify for this type of assistance. They form their own line somewhere down on
the quays. Please God don’t let there be trouble with them.

Got a little
radio here. Stick the earphones in for a bit of isolation. News. They’re
talking about the weather. Atlantic storm, says the radio man. Will hit our
shores in about 48 hours. He says this with that sort of media breeziness that
does my head in. He would use the same voice to report on a greyhound doping scandal
or the year’s Tidy Towns winner.

But hold –
what’s he saying now?

‘From midnight
tonight, electricity supply will be limited to two hours from 8AM to 10AM each
morning, and from 5PM to 7PM each evening. Food distribution will be suspended
throughout the country from 3PM tomorrow afternoon until the storm has passed.’

Lucky break to
be here today.

But good luck
must be balanced out with lashings of bad. These pieces of human flotsam in
front of me are starting to kick up some sort of fuss. No, in fact they are
only joining in. The actual incident is developing a little bit further up the
queue. A big bloke up there with gelled hair a shiny padded overcoat grips
another man by the scruff of the neck, and is shoving him towards a couple of
Gardai. An Icelander. The Gardai take over, usher the man and his family
towards the exit. ‘You need a card. Understand?’ No food for foreigners here.

As the line
starts to move the three delinquents in front of me are told they will get
nothing here. Their reaction is predictable – streams of curses directed at
everyone in the vicinity. The biggest one, a wheezing, slouching wreck, gives
me a feeble push. Take care not to lose my place in the queue. The police
arrive and fling the three of them in the direction of the side exit.

I receive my
rations and Helen’s without trouble. As I step outside, drawing in the cold and
smoky air, I see that the last streaks of sunlit cloud all are that’s left of
daytime. Venus shines brightly in the darkening sky. The lit windows of Grafton
Street seem warm and welcoming. There are few people about – few shoppers, I
mean, though plenty of loiterers and beggars.

The street
lights have not come on. Must be the rationing. Only the light from windows and
the city traffic produce illumination as I make my way home. No wonder Venus is
so bright tonight. I can’t remember the last time I saw so many stars.

How many stars
can be seen with the naked eye? Is it possible to see galaxies and nebulae
beyond the reach of city lights? I don’t think I can see any now, although with
my imperfect eyesight I’m not sure. It’s easy enough to identify Jupiter and
Mars, also prominent in the sky. And Orion, with red Betelgeuse ripe for
destruction, and that famous M42 nebula, if only my squinting eyes could see
it.

And where is the
M50 nebula, if there is such a body, namesake of our semicircular motorway?
Where is the Andromeda galaxy, and the Red Cow galaxy and Proxima Centauri? I
wish I knew more about the heavens. All those mysterious, beautiful old names –
Algol, Fomalhaut, Mizar. Merak, Arcturus, Canopus. Real places, all. This
epiphanic moment makes me feel the physical reality of them.

Kick the snow
off the soles of my boots and open the front door. The light is on in the warm
hallway. No one in the sitting room where, it sometimes entertains me to think,
the flames of the fire cast out the released yellow light of the carboniferous
sun.

Helen is
standing by the sink in the kitchen. Sitting at the table is Heathshade,
sifting through a pile of magazines. I wonder whether they’re of the
pornographic or the military variety.

‘Alright,
George. I was showing these to your lady. Didn’t know she was so interested in
World War II.’

She throws me a
pained look, which makes me smile.

Upstairs the bedroom
is freezing. There’s ice on the windowsill. But let me have a few minutes to
myself. Let me get under the heavy quilts, fog emanating from my lungs, vapour
for which the dry air has such thirst. So different to the humid paradise of
the sitting room where beads of glistening water roll down the windowpanes, as
not so long ago they ran down the other side of the glass during the cleansing
warm rainstorm.

‘George, are you
asleep?’

Helen’s standing
over me.

‘No.’ I struggle
to my feet in search of dignity.

‘I presume you
want your dinner.’

I mutter
something - I don’t know what it is myself. She goes back downstairs, leaving
me to follow.

Heathshade’s
awaiting his food at the kitchen table.

‘Bit of kip,
mate?’

It’s a meagre
enough meal. A couple of sausages, a small amount of mashed potato (a warming
foodstuff, especially with a lot of butter in it), and a wedge of turnip each. Heathshade
eats like he hasn’t seen food in days. And, in fact, that’s also how he looks,
sunken cheeks, darkness around the eyes. Testament to his dissipative
lifestyle, I suppose. Even as the country sinks deeper into calamity,
Heathshade does his bit to keep the leisure and hospitality industries afloat
by distributing his dole money to the publicans and night-club owners. In fact,
he must be getting money from elsewhere too, because I fail to see how he
maintains his lifestyle purely on public assistance. Perhaps it’s through the
saving he makes by paying such a low rent and getting his dinner laid on for
him every day on top of that.

By the time we
have finished, the wind has strengthened to gale-force. The street is empty,
swept by turning ice devils. Directly across the road outside are some upright
metal grilles - star and crescent, square and circle motifs running across
them. These act as a series of obstacles for the powerful airflow, setting up
resonances that carry across to us; strange tones and chords weaving through
the storm’s deep roar. I find myself inexplicably moved by it. Don’t think the
other two have noticed, but natural processes have interacted with the roughly
Euclidean proportions of the railing to produce ahuman music. Music without
composer, without musicians. Makes me askd oes any aspect of the physical world
still require human intermediaries in order to exist? Is it the case that
Nature does not require us for any further purpose, that no higher power now
demands our presence in the world to make Creation complete?

Ice bits blasts
the rattling windowpanes of this house. I put some more wood on the fire – part
of the dismantled fence in the back garden.

I’m glad no one
is talking. Silence is the best thing right now. We’ll have to sleep here in
the living room. It’s the only room warm enough in these suddenly worsened
conditions. Helen and I have the sofa, Heathshade an armchair. The room is lit
only by the fire which hisses and spits as it burns off layers of paint. There’s
enough coal to last a while. I hold Helen tight under the blankets, trying to
move some of my body heat into her.

She’s asleep,
Heathshade snoring. In the chords of the wind I identify the crying of the cat.
Saw no sign of her while I was taking apart the fence this morning. At the
kitchen window I find my friend scratching at the glass, paws sunk into piling
snow. I open the window and lift her inside. Solid pieces of ice clump to her
fur, cooling her hypothermic body. I brush some of it out and set her by the
fire in the living room

The cat‘s
wheezing diminishes gradually to quietness, and I find my way back towards
sleep, glad that the animal is here. In the event of an invasion of earth by
superior forces bent on human destruction, I would struggle to deny a measure
of sympathy for their cause. Protect select humans, by all means, but also deserving
non-humans. Let the rest fend for themselves. Should I feel ashamed of my
non-species-specific allegiances? How ironic that the rising sea level of the
past century threatened to overwhelm the natural dam of the Atlantic Falls,
waking the spectre of Mediterranean Basin’s re-oceanification, inundation of
the Far City. That this possibility was forestalled by the new Ice Age was
purely down to luck, and was not without undesirable spin-off consequences,
such as the migration of the northern Neanderthal tribes southward into Africa.
One anticipates new political dynamics in the coming decades, as previously
distant peoples confront each other and compete for the resources of northern
Africa. Not just the Neanderthals either, but we Sapients, we technological
gods. We shall fight new wars too. Perhaps we shall desire the sacrosanct
Neanderthal lands.

But I can't
allow myself to indulge in these pointless speculations, to succumb to such
laxity of mind. My thoughts should be for Helen and the baby. They will both
need me solid and dependable in times to come. But perhaps Helen's pregnancy is
another product of my delusional state. No, don’t think that. Reject the
notion, cling to undeniable reality. After all, I do feel the warmth of the
sun's morning rays through the thick glass. I see the complexity of the city
unfold before my eyes. I trace the thread of Dublin City Cylinder as it
stretches into the stratosphere. I smell the scent of coffee emanating from the
kitchen. I feel the cold of the tiles beneath my bare feet. Everything is real.

Movement in the
apartment across the street catches my eye. My mind goes back to the man from
my waking dream, with his manic exercising, and the mad glare in his eye as he
drew the curtains violently shut. There, now, is the same man, furiously pacing
about the apartment. He is like a caged animal seeking a means of escape. He
charges towards the front door and crashes against it, shoulder first. He
bounces away in palpable agony. Then he picks up something dark and heavy, a
metallic chair, and attempts to beat down the door with it. However, the sturdy
door resists his assault. Finally, he falls to the floor, exhausted. He lays
face-up, despairing, hands covering his face, for a long time. Then suddenly he
is on his feat again. He leaps through the window and plunges in a shower of
shattered glass towards the street.

The apartment
ambience alters. What accounts for it? Ghosts? Someone is hammering on the
front door, screaming in rage. It’s the man from across the street. Through
some hitherto unsuspected sense, perhaps one that activates only in the event
of mortal danger, I know that his desire is to kill me. I have nowhere to run,
no weapon with which to kill him first. The lock is giving way under the
tremendous force of his enraged battering. I crouch behind the kitchen table,
but he will see me here. Can I get out onto the window ledge, cross to another
window? Too late, he’s in. Seeing me, he bellows triumphantly. He advances,
brandishing a heavy club, a Neanderthal
zurk
, as from a museum. The
striped city light illuminates his face. I know the man. It’s -  

‘Jesus Christ,
wake up, will you?’

Heathshade has
his tight fist on my chest, shaking me. I knock away the knotted hand. ‘Stop.’

‘There.’ He
stands up, giving me one last, vigorous shove. ‘You having a bad dream, George?’

Helen is
sitting by the fire, looking at me, stirring something in a pot.

‘Are you all
right?’ she says.

I’m far from
all right. My whole body is shaking, and not from the cold. The weight of the
blankets on top of me is suddenly unendurable. Grey morning light comes through
the window. The snow is higher than ever – up to about five feet, from what I
can see. At least the storm has ended. I can see hard blue sky above.