Maggot Moon by Sally Gardner
I wasn’t expecting the leather-coat man. He was yesterday’s problem. What surprised me most about seeing him was this: up to that moment my legs had been river reeds which threatened to collapse under me. But the sight of this git put the bull between my teeth good and proper.
“It’s becoming routine,” said the leather-coat man. “Every day I’m faced with Standish Treadwell. Where is your grandfather?”
“Asleep,” I said. “Why do you want him?”
He slapped me across the face with his leather glove.
“I ask the questions.”
He was speaking to me again as if I was stupid and to oblige I said, really slowly, “Yes, sir.”
I could see the Greenflies waiting behind him for the order to come charging in.
“Mr. Treadwell,” said the leather-coat man.
I turned to see Gramps stiffening that gammy leg of his. He pottered down the stairs real slow in his old pajamas and his patchwork dressing gown, yawning.
“Why are you here?” he asked. “You broke everything yesterday.”
It was not hard to see that the leather-coat man was a kettle of liquid fury about to reach boiling point. He sat on one of the broken chairs. It rocked back and forth. I hoped the bloody thing would break under him. He took to slapping the table, slapping it with his leather gloves.
Gramps just let out a sigh soiled with weariness. “I’m an old man. I try to survive with my grandson, nothing more. Why do you keep hounding us? We have done nothing wrong.”
The leather-coat man didn’t answer. He waved in the Greenflies. Gramps was right about one thing, they were very young. Just a bit older than me. Upstairs, downstairs, they went, into the cellar. An infestation of them.
I thought, well, this is it, it’s all over apart from the wailing and gnashing of teeth. Louder than the rats in the woodwork were those soldiers. The walls seemed papier-mâché thin. The floorboards shook.
The leather-coat man sat there, smack-smack-smacking his gloves on the table. He stopped only to take out a cigarette and light it.
Finally, he said, “I want you to tell me where he is.”
“Who?” asked Gramps.
The leather-coat man was stuck on the flypaper of an unanswerable question.
The gloves hit the table again. The long silence was broken. The leather-coat man said, “We took a television away from this house.”
“Yes,” said Gramps. “It was from the time we were allowed to have them.”
Much to my amazement the leather-coat man didn’t answer.
I realized that Gramps must have pulled that TV apart so that no one would suspect that we had seen the land of Croca-Colas, where all the color lived, where people were having a ball.
The leather-coat man stubbed out his cigarette on the table, leaving a round, burnt hole. Maybe it was that burnt hole on the table that gave me the idea. You see, I saw in its pattern a stone. That’s when the idea floated into my brain.
The Greenflies came up from the cellar. They looked as if they’d done their job to the letter, their uniforms more gray than green. I knew they hadn’t found the moon man because if they had we would have heard their triumphant shouts. Instead they brought up the rat traps.
The man in charge of the Greenflies came down the stairs. He didn’t look too happy to whisper what he had to whisper to the leather-coat man.
“Nothing? Nothing? Are you sure?” shouted the leather-coat man.
“Nothing, sir.”
The odd thing about being that close to the edge was that I could see that both Gramps and I were resigned to the fall. It was almost as if it was Fate’s game, not ours. She was the one dealing the cards. I think I knew then what was going on behind the wall in the garden. They had built the moon in that hideous building, the one once called the people’s palace.
That was when my idea became a plan. I thought about it from all angles. I almost left the room — it was really taking shape.
“You are both under house arrest.” The leather-coat man interrupted my thoughts, which was irritating as I had spun the whole thing in my head, 360 degrees.
“Are you listening, Standish Treadwell?” he said.
I have this effect on people. They think I’m not paying attention when I am.
To the train-track mind of the leather-coat man, I appeared to be vacant. Vacant was the word Mr. Gunnell liked to use about me. Vacant I might look, but I am not. Hector and I spent ages working on this look of mine. You don’t get to sit right at the back of the class if you’re stand-out smart.
“You and your grandfather will be removed at zero six-thirty hours tomorrow. You are being offered salvation over annihilation. You will both be sent on a re-education course.”
No, we bloody well won’t. He was lying. We were going to be wiped out, maggot meat.
“Each of you can pack one suitcase,” he continued. “Under no circumstances are you to leave these premises.”
The jerk. This was our house, our home.
The Greenflies waited until the leather-coat man strode out to his black, bluebottle car.
We stood on the step, Gramps and me, as if we were saying good-bye to friends who had popped in for tea. We watched the last of the Greenflies climb back into the trucks. They drove off, leaving only the car with the detectives watching us from behind their dark glasses.
If I were a Juniparian, which I’m not, I would save the world. Still, I did have a plan. It was based on a story I once heard about this giant and a boy about my age, my height, and a stone. Just one small stone shot from a sling hit that giant between the eyes. He dropped down dead, the giant did. I tell you, it was such a foolish idea I thought it might be foolproof.
Miss Phillips came down the stairs. She wore a pair of Gramps’s trousers and one of his shirts.
She looked at him and smiled. “One of the Greenflies said if anyone was hiding in there they would have closed the door.”
I thought the difficult part of my plan would be to convince Gramps and Miss Phillips that it would work. That all I needed to defeat the Motherland was one stone.
And the stone thrower would be me.
There was much I learned that day about Gramps. For a start, as well as having Miss Phillips, he had a transmitter. I still can’t make my way round it. How I could be so naive about both? Apparently the transmitter broke over a year back. You can’t take a thing like that to the shop to get it mended. It was Mr. Lush who fixed it and made sure that even if the Motherland picked up the signal, the code would automatically be scrambled.
A day ago I didn’t know there was a transmitter behind a wooden panel in the kitchen wall. A day ago, I thought of Gramps as old. Today he is a silver fox with a cunning tail.
Miss Phillips sat in the secret chamber in Cellar Street. Cripes, she is clever. She could read the moon man’s notes even though they were in the language of the East. Gramps hadn’t been able to make tail or head of them. He sat on a stool next to her with the earphones on, patiently trying to get a message through to the Obstructors. All was dead.
By lunchtime there had been nothing.
In the end Gramps stopped trying. We ate scrambled eggs with stale toast. Miss Phillips hardly touched her food. She had lost her appetite. I think it was to do with the moon man’s notes. He wasn’t eating either.
“What do they say?” asked Gramps, squeezing Miss Phillips’s hand.
“Let me just go over them once more,” she said.
I knew she was stalling.
“They have had built a huge film set of the moon in the old palace, haven’t they?” I said.
“Yes,” said Miss Phillips. “They will film the rocket landing on the moon there, and the first moon walk. Afterwards, everyone who has worked on the project will be disposed of. That includes the scientists, the workers, and the astronauts. They have already dug the mass graves.”
I interrupted her. “How did the moon man find our tunnel?” The moon man wrote and Miss Phillips transla
Miss Phillips hesitated.
I said, “He saw Hector, didn’t he?”
The moon man nodded then started to write again on the notepad. Miss Phillips looked more and more uncomfortable.
“Read it out, love,” said Gramps.
She had a good voice. Nothing of what she read would be good in any voice.
“In the beginning I believed I was involved in a genuine space mission. Then one of the scientists who had built the first prototype rocket confided in me that the belt of radiation around the moon would fry us alive. The scientist disappeared soon after. For no reason I could work out, I was sent here to Zone Seven and I realized that the scientist was right. This was the greatest hoax in the history of mankind. I asked too many questions and that’s when they silenced me. But they still needed my face. I had to escape. I took a stroll near the bottom of the wall where the bushes are wild. That was where I spotted a red football. And at the same time a boy emerged from the earth, or so it seemed. I knew the boy. The boy knew me.”
“How?” I interrupted again.
Miss Phillips translated. “I recognized him as the son of the scientist responsible for building the first prototype, the scientist who told me it was impossible to send a man to the moon.”
“Mr. Lush?” said Gramps.
The moon man nodded.
“Are they in there?” asked Gramps. “Are they all right?”
He made his hand into the shape of a gun. I don’t think any of us wanted to hear the answer that the moon man wrote down.
Miss Phillips’s voice was almost a whisper as she read out his words. “Mrs. Lush was shot the minute they arrived, in front of Mr. Lush and their son. We all witnessed it.”
“Why?” I shouted. “Why?” The question hung unanswered.
It was a slow business, what with Miss Phillips having to put all the moon man’s writing into words we could understand.
“Punishment for not cooperating.”
“What about Hector?”
I waited forever until Miss Phillips said, “They chopped off his little finger after they killed Mrs. Lush, and told Mr. Lush if he refused to do all that was asked of him another finger would go, and another.”
“Is Hector alive?”
The moon man nodded. He held up nine fingers.
“So he lost the one?”
The moon man nodded again.
Gramps almost didn’t hear the beeps coming through on the transmitter. At long last, someone, somewhere was receiving us. The beeps sounded like the heartbeat of a civilization we had feared might well be dead.
We had orders from the Obstructors to be ready to leave at eleven o’clock that evening. We were to make our way to the farthest end of Cellar Street, in the direction of the double-breasted houses.
That was when I said, “I’m not coming.”
“You have to, Standish,” said Gramps. “You can’t stay here.”
“I’m going to rescue Hector,” I said. “Throw my stone into the face of the Motherland. Show the world the moon landing is a hoax.”
“Standish,” said Gramps, “your head is full of dreams.”
So I told them my plan. I told them if I could get near the moon set then when the astronaut took his first steps I would try to break free from the other workers and stand on the moon surface in front of the cameras. I would hold up a piece of paper with the word HOAX written on it. Then the free world would know it was all a lie.
“What? And be shot dead?” said Gramps, his face full of storm clouds of rage.
To tell the truth, I hadn’t thought about what would happen after I held up my sign. I’d work it out then and there. That bit didn’t strike me as something you could plan. There were, as always, too many what ifs.
“If a giant can be brought down by a stone, can’t I do the same?”
“No,” said Gramps. “No. It’s a bloody stupid idea.”
Surprisingly, Miss Phillips said, “Maybe, Harry, he can get in there, do something . . .”
“And bloody well be killed into the bargain,” said Gramps. He was spitting angry. It was not all to do with my plan, of that I was sure. It had a lot to do with the Lushes and Hector. He said, “I have lost my family, my friends. I am not about to sacrifice my grandson.”
Miss Phillips put her hand on Gramps’s arm.
“Our chances of escaping are tiny,” she said. “If we are all killed then what would we have achieved? No one would ever know it was a hoax. The leaders of the free world will swallow this lie and by doing so they will make the Motherland all-powerful.”
I could see Gramps was doing his best not to listen.
“Harry,” Miss Phillips said softly, “whatever happens you will never be alone, I promise.”
I felt relieved about that. I wanted to say more.
All I managed was, “Miss Phillips is right. You will never be without me either, whether I go with you or not.”
Gramps was shaking as if an earthquake was erupting from his tummy button. Tears, the tears he said he would never cry, rolled down his face in a cascade of rage. I hugged him. I held him tight. I had the strength to do that.
He clung to me. I would remember that until the end, whatever, whenever the end might be.
He let me go, turned away, his shoulders shaking, a sob rising out of him.
Still I felt certain I could be the stone thrower.
The moon man went to Gramps and put his hand on his shoulder, to give him gravity when everything was floating away. Then he scribbled something on the notepad and handed it to Miss Phillips.
She read it out loud, slowly.
It said what Gramps didn’t want to hear. Neither did Miss Phillips. For all her courage I could see that.
“Standish is our only hope.”
I spent the rest of the afternoon with the moon man and Miss Phillips. Gramps went back upstairs. He didn’t want to hear any more. I don’t blame him. I had to, if I was ever to throw my stone.
What the moon man told me was no longer written on a notepad but scribbled into my brain. I knew exactly what was going on behind that wall. I had the map. I had the knowledge.
I return upstairs to wait with Gramps until it’s time for me to leave. Miss Phillips and the moon man stay put in Cellar Street.
Gramps has been making full-size cut-out figures. Why, I haven’t a clue. He is sitting on the floor staring at nothing, surrounded by bits of cardboard. I think it is all too much for him. Tell you this, it’s all too much for me.
I sit next to him. There are no words. His thoughts are too loud for me. I block them out by telling myself the story of what has happened up to this moment. The moment Gramps and I are sitting together on this curled-up linoleum. I take a photo of him with my mind’s eye, one I can carry with me. I am trying to see what he looked like when he was younger, before the crust of age and anxiety grew over him. His hands are big; they look like the roots of trees, well-worn, well-used. They can paint walls to fool Greenflies, make whole all that is broken. They are hands that I’m walking away from. I know what Gramps is thinking. He is wondering if he will have the strength to let me go. I’m wondering if I will have the strength to leave him.
What would happen if we sat here dead still, did nothing? Would time leave us alone, pass us by?
Bring down the curtain.
Bring up the credits.
The end.
Frick-fracking hell! That rat-a-tat-tat quick-started time, made its heart, our hearts, do a round of the racecourse. We both raise our heads. I spring to my feet. The detectives usually aren’t that polite. Knocking is something they don’t do much of. No, this is a different kettle of shit altogether. They’re checking up on us, want the blackout curtains taken down. They remind us we have to be ready to leave at six-thirty the next morning.
“Yes,” I say, hoping they haven’t spied Gramps sitting
I close the front door as Gramps gets slowly to his feet.
“Time,” he says. “It’s time, Standish.”
He attaches the two cut-out figures to two broken chairs. Now I see what he was up to. The silhouettes look very much like me and Gramps. He is bloody clever at things like this, always one step ahead. He knew those detectives would want to see in. It’s twilight and the flickering candles do their trick, make those cardboard cutouts look almost realistic. At least they will fool the detectives, make them think we are quietly awaiting our fate.
Just before ten o’clock we crawl across the kitchen floor towards the stairs. It occurs to me that in five hours the only words Gramps has spoken are, “Time, Standish, it’s time.”
In the bedroom that once belonged to my parents, Gramps hands me a wide belt he has made. It is to go under my clothes. On both sides in Gramps’s beautiful hand is written large and bold the word HOAX. Do you know, I think this is what he has been doing while I was in the cellar. The cardboard figures were an afterthought.
“I haven’t a sling to give you. This will have to do,” he says.
I don’t say what I want to say. Perhaps it’s better.
I get dressed in the rags Gramps has found for me. Rags that would embarrass a scarecrow. Gramps brings out Mum’s old makeup bag. He gently puts chalky paste on my face, darkens the sockets round my eyes, rubs mud into my hands.
When I look in that monster wardrobe mirror I see a ghost. My ghost.
Miss Phillips has come up from Cellar Street and is sitting in the shadows on the top stair.
I know why she is there. To say the unsayable good-bye.
Gramps opens the back door and turns towards her.
Miss Phillips’s hard, no-nonsense face is bruised, tender-wet with tears. She nods.
Outside, the moon is up over the wall. Gramps pulled down the air-raid shelter after the moon man appeared. All that is left of it is neatly stacked to hide the tunnel entrance. He removes the sheets of corrugated iron, ready for me to get through before he puts them all back. So that it will look like nothing has happened.