The Beynons woke to find a wall around their house. Hearing workmen behind the wall, Fred bellowed: ‘What’s occurring?’
‘National plan,’ came a muffled voice.
‘Keeping others out or us in?’ Dora shouted. Her mind was quicker than her husband’s.
‘I’m just doing what I’m told.’
‘How do I get to work?’ Fred yelled. ‘How does Alice get to school?’
A powerful drill drowned out the man’s voice. Dora thought she heard him say, ‘All over the country.’
‘Could think of it as a bit of a holiday, Fred.’
‘A few days off from the office’ll be alright, I suppose. Hope it’s not too long though. I’m behind with customer accounts.’
Alice appeared in school uniform.
‘It won’t last long,’ her mother said. ‘Probably one of the president’s ideas.’
‘Perhaps they’ll run out of bricks, Mummy?’
Fred put on the news channel. There were clips of workpeople toiling hard, erecting walls around houses. A sign on the screen said: National Renewal, making our nation safe.
‘Mummy, what happens to the people behind the wall?’
‘I’m in the dark about that, dear.’
‘So are they,’ Fred muttered.
‘Have they been naughty, Daddy?’
Fred and Dora looked at each other.
‘You’ve been respectful to the customers, haven’t you, Fred?’
‘You’ve not upset anyone on the ward at hospital, have you, Dora?’
The next day – the lack of light, dizzying claustrophobia – Fred said: ‘I’m going to ring and complain.’
‘No!’ Dora pleaded. ‘Last time you complained…’
‘He was just a jumped-up squirt.’
‘Yes but he reported us.’
‘Nothing happened though.’
‘… Until now.’
‘Are you suggesting this wall is…?’
‘Punishment?’ She put on the news channel. ‘Fred! It’s selected houses. We must be on the list.’
‘What list?’
‘At work the doctors talk about a list: of troublemakers. The consultants say: “They have eyes.” ’
Next day, the fresh food beginning to run out, they ate only a small breakfast. Fred tried again to open the front and back doors, but the wall enclosing the whole house was less than an inch from them.
‘I’m suffocating,’ he said. ‘You were right. I looked through the front window and these eyes built into wall stared back. I can’t take anymore!’
Dora tried to caress his hand.
‘Get off me! You put us on that list! Been upsetting the doctors again, haven’t you?’
‘I’ve never…’
The day after she found Fred peeking out the front door, muttering, ‘A tomb, buried alive. You want me die here, don’t you!’
‘Who are you talking to?’
‘There’s no light in here anymore. My head’s spinning. I’m cracking up.’
‘Mummy, I’m hungry,’ Alice said.
Fred flung a plate to the floor: ‘Food? I can’t see. We must’ve done something wrong. No electricity, no internet. I can’t cope!’
‘Don’t cry, Daddy.’
‘Take that wall away from me!’ he shouted. He was pointing at his daughter and wife.
‘Do you mean us, Fred…?’
Fred looked at his face in the hall mirror and saw bricks. The wall was growing inside him.
