Lost Footsteps by Bel Mooney

Author:Bel Mooney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2013-05-20T16:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Four

He woke to the sound of gunfire. Rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, like in the games they used to play, long ago, in another place, two fingers pressed together. ‘You’re dead!’

The room was warm. In the yellow light from the door he could see the mobile above his bed twirling slowly, little white mobile woolly things going round and round, a silver moon above.

‘Is it – for me?’ he had asked and she had smiled.

‘For you, little one,’ she said, ‘to help you sleep.’

And there were presents by the Christmas tree – he had seen them. Four or five of them, all wrapped in shiny paper and bearing his name. For tomorrow …

Rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat.

Puzzled, he crept from his bed, not bothering with the slippers which stood by the radiator. The corridor was long; the threatening sound came from just along it, on the left. A whine … then voices. Then more gunfire.

Silently he stood at the open door of the sitting-room. They were watching the news. The baubles and tinsel on the tree in the corner shivered slightly, as though disturbed by his breath – but the two people on the squashy old sofa didn’t turn around. As images of violence flickered across the screen, they watched attentively, occasionally murmuring a comment which needed no reply, as people do when they share a view of the world.

Yet what world was it they were watching? He could not understand all the commentary, of course. But he saw the tanks and heard the guns, and one word was repeated over and over again. So he knew.

Then there were the bodies, laid in rows.

Such a long way away; so many roads ribboning back and forth they had travelled. And he knew they could not possibly hurt her any more. Never again. She could stay here with him forever, just as she wanted, locked away inside him, and watching as he opened …

He glanced across the room. Some were lumpy, some were square, but each of them bore a tag with his name on it. His name? Well, a name. And he told himself, as guilt flickered briefly, that names don’t matter after all. As long as you are safe.

He crept away, climbed back into bed, and fell asleep immediately.

But in the middle of the night he heard it again: Rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, RAT-A-TAT! Peeeee-ow-crump. And the fat man who stank of onions was pushing her against the door and hitting her again and again, laughing as he did it, and then some more men came through the door, levelling guns and shouting, ‘You’re dead, you’re dead!’ And she fell on the floor crying as they knelt in a circle around her, hitting her, doing things to her. Screaming, waving his arms, he ran forward to try to push them away … ‘Mama! Mama! Mama!’

Then the shooting began: rat-a-tat, rat-tat-tat-tat…

He was fighting tangled bedclothes and hitting out wildly at the wall. The little flying lambs careered wildly, as currents of hot air rose upwards, and in his panic he knocked the picture of Babar askew.

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