Children of the Dust Read Online Free PDF Page A

lived or died. A rectangle of gloomy twilight showed briefly and was gone and Sarah listened to the rustle of the garbage bag clothes as Veronica put them on.
    Buster must have been waiting outside the door but his greeting was subdued, and Veronica hardly spoke to him. She said, when she returned, that he did not seem interested in food and the meat in the freezer had all gone bad. She seemed more dispirited than ever, gripped by the hopelessness from which she could not escape. And the world outside was semi-dark, smothered by dust, everything green gone grey.
    She had seen dead sheep lying on the common and she had not emptied the commode.
    If the sheep are dead,' said William, 'we could have one lor dinner.'
    No,' said Sarah. 'They died of radiation sickness.'
    And we'll die too if we eat them,' said Catherine.
    'I'm fed up with stew,' said William.
    'You can have dog biscuits instead,' said Sarah.
    'I've just had dog biscuits!' William said furiously.
    He threw the empty dish in the fireplace.
    And it was one more temper tantrum for Sarah to deal with, one more irrational incident to add to the madness of yesterday. 'Why doesn't he understand?' Veronica said desperately. But William would never understand.
    He roamed through the darkness, aimless and aggravating, a five-year-old child dependent on sounds to keep him interested, and the sounds alone were enough to drive anyone demented. He lifted the bucket handle and let it clatter back into place, over and over again, until Sarah shouted at him to stop it. Then he made chimes with the begonia stick on the fireside companion set, a metallic music as the tongs and brush, poker and shovel, rattled and clanged. Sarah removed them and stowed them in the corner with the rest of the junk. After that William played with the switches on the television, changing channels with loud irritating clicks, ignoring Sarah when she asked him not to, waiting for his mother. And the reaction came, the same as yesterday.
    'I'm going to kill you in a minute!' Veronica screamed. 'I'll smash your head against the wall! Leave that flaming television alone!'
    William retreated to the armchair, drummed his heels against the side. He talked about dinner, whined and grizzled, wanted a packet of crisps, wanted ginger cake and Mars bars and an orange ice-lolly. Everything Veronica could not give him William wanted and demanded to know why he could not have them. Deprivation was something he had never known before and Veronica had always been his main source of supply. He refused to accept that what she had always given him she could give him no longer. In a fit of rage he broke up Catherine's Barbie doll furniture and hurled it into the blind dark space where Veronica sat.
    'You buy me a Mars bar, Mummy!' William shouted. Nobody expected Veronica to cry but she cried then, long broken sobs that racked her body, a human sound of absolute despair. William was shocked into silence and Catherine, who had been screaming at him for breaking her Barbie doll furniture, was silent too. Sarah groped her way towards the settee, feeling the debris of Lego bricks, not knowing what to do or say. She touched Veronica's leg, her hand, her shoulder. Put her arms around the older woman she had
never loved.
    'Don't cry,' said Sarah. 'Don't cry, Veronica. William didn't mean it. He didn't mean to hurt you. He's only a little boy and he doesn't understand.'
    'Oh God!' Veronica wept. 'I can't go on like this. I just can't. It's not only William. It's everything. All of us trapped in this hell hole of a room. I can't stand it! I just can't stand it any longer!'
    'It's only for another eight or nine days,' Sarah said consolingly.
    'You haven't been outside!' Veronica sobbed. 'You don't know what it's like. Everything's dying. There's no way we'll be able to stay alive. Nothing to hope for. No future for any of us. I should have listened to you. I should have gone to the chemist's and got some pills.'
    'No,' said Sarah.