Beyond The Wave

Chapter Fifteen - Mr Bibbidi-Bobbidi Cannibal Man

Once he had accepted that I wasn't going to allow him to just curl up and die, Ashley recovered very quickly. It confirmed what I had suspected all along. There was nothing really wrong with him, he was just upset that Janet had died; understandable but simply not a luxury that could be afforded to him.

And slowly we had to get used to living as a four in that claustrophobic space. Everybody was careful and considerate but... for some reason, Ashley and Tristram seemed to keep finding reasons to bang heads with each other.

All sorts of trivial reasons could trigger a blazing row - the order in which they performed the regular sweep of the radio frequencies, for example. Even I understood that it simply didn't matter whether you went up through the frequencies or down and it certainly wasn't worth a big stand up row which left Bonnie in tears and almost did the same to me.

There was another shouting match about the way in which they should store their electronic components. I wasn't really sure but it sounded to me as if they were both saying the same thing.

At least one of the rows was my fault. I had promised to put Ashley's wet stuff away for him when he had come back in after adjusting an aerial and then forgotten. I had to step in and admit that it was my fault which shut the two of them up for a couple of hours.

I wanted to shout at them or shake them in my frustration. I would have even understood if it had just been Ashley doing it - a lingering after effect of Janet's death - but no, Tristram was as bad, if not worse. I tried to ask him a couple of times what was wrong but every time he fobbed me off with inadequate explanations. We were still sleeping in the same bed but we were never comfortable about making love, knowing that Ashley and Bonnie were only a few yards away on the other side of a thin door and the whole situation was making me more and more frustrated. I was even starting to lose my temper with Bonnie and I truly hated that.

About two weeks after the crash, I was sitting at the dining table, shortly after breakfast, continuing my medical studies, as Tristram tidied up the kitchen. I was vaguely aware of Ashley, over on the sofa, singing Bonnie a song about 'Mr Bibbidi-Bobbidi Cannibal Man' who, apparently, would, 'Eat you up if he possibly can'. He appeared to be making it up as he went along and nibbling and tickling various bits of her body as he did so.

It made a change from the customary tension in the bunker and it was a relief to hear him being his familiar, silly self. Even after he had accepted the need to get on with life after Janet's death, he had been, understandably, extremely subdued. Bonnie was clearly appreciating it too and responding with giggles and screeches of laughter.

I was trying, unsuccessfully, to ignore him but, when he heard me giggling along with Bonnie, some of the jokes became distinctly... adult in nature, evidently aimed at me rather than his daughter.

"I wonder how many Bibbidi-Bobbidi cannibal men there are out there at the moment," Tristram observed quietly after a couple of minutes. Another one of the not quite caustic comments the two men continued to casually sling towards one another.

"People wouldn't, would they?" I said, both appalled at the idea and hoping to avoid yet another mindless row.

"Most of the people out there are going to be starving and there's only one reliable source of meat about," he answered. He wasn't obviously whispering but he was keeping his voice neutral so that Bonnie wouldn't notice. "And in a strictly 'survival of the fittest' sense, the people that resort to cannibalism are going to live longer."

"But..." I desperately wanted to find some sort of argument against it but I couldn't come up with one.

The three of us were quiet for a long time. "How long is our food going to last?" I asked at last.