The First Book of Calamity Leek Read online

  We had to bang the walls and shout bing-bong bing-bong, because, ‘Airports are noisy places,’ Aunty said, having a drink of medicine, ‘and you’d better get used to it.’ Sandra was dressed up in the burka and Aunty started asking her questions.

  ‘Have you packed this bag yourself?’

  ‘Did anyone give you anything to put in it?’

  ‘Do you have any seating preferences?’

  ‘Do you have any dietary requirements?’

  ‘Enjoy the flight.’

  And Sandra had to say – ‘Yes, no, no, no, thank you.’

  ‘And even you, Sandra,’ Aunty said, ‘can manage that.’

  Next, Aunty changed her red hat to a black cap, and made her voice hard as a brick. ‘Passport!’

  Sandra had to walk up and hand over a piece of card.

  Aunty frowned and looked at Sandra and looked at the card, and handed it back. Then Sandra had to stand with her arms out, and Aunty patted her up and down and went, ‘Shoes off, miss. Beep-beep.’

  ‘And that, my gorgeous golden tickets,’ Aunty said, ‘is how you go through an airport.’

  Aunty sent Mary to fetch a water jug, and we all sat down in two rows on the floor, with our backs against bales. Aunty handed out a tiny pink sweet to each of us. ‘It might make you feel a little air-headed, darlings, or it might do nothing at all, but let’s each try one and see what happens.’

  ‘Why?’ Annie asked, looking at her sweet like it was a bit of grit.

  I held my breath, but even Annie couldn’t bother Aunty today.

  ‘Heavens, practice makes perfect, sugarlumps! Just imagine the consequences if you were to suffer an adverse reaction when you come to swallow one for real. It would be catastrophic for all concerned.’

  ‘But why do we have to swallow them at all?’

  Aunty smiled so wide her top teeth fell down, ‘Well now, niece nosy face, we have to help the plane get off the ground somehow, don’t we? You’ve seen how big they are. And if I’m not wrong, this will turn you light as a cloud, which, without getting too technical, should make the plane’s uplift easy-peasy. Off you go, darlings, down in one.’

  Aunty sat on a bale in front of us, because she wanted to keep her eye on us while the sweets worked. Us being so valuable to her, she said she didn’t want us floating up to the ceiling and banging our heads.

  ‘See, this is how we fly without wings,’ I whispered to Annie. ‘If only Truly could have stayed to try this.’ Because I reckoned it wouldn’t take another sweet to send me up to the clouds.

  Little Adelaide Worthing spoke out for us all when she said, ‘I’m floating.’

  Aunty looked at her watch and smiled at Adelaide, ‘Well, you just sit back and enjoy the flight, my sweetest of peas.’ Aunty settled her bottom on the bale. She had a hard brown book in her hands. As a treat, she said, she would tell us a tale from the Archive while the sweets got to work. She started digging through the pages.

  ‘It’s Volume Four!’ I tried to tell Annie, though my tongue weren’t too keen to budge. ‘We’re getting the Splashback story! For sure we are!’ Which story was the tale of Aunty’s most tragic Splashback, when she tried to put a poor old female called Penny the Dreariest Diva in Dudley out of her misery. See, poor old Penny was getting cooked up regular by a demonmale called The Director, which not only made her burn nasty inside, but also made her prance about non-stop, snatching all of the roles that really should have had Aunty’s name on them. Which was a big problem for the whole planet, because how was Aunty to extend her Showreel to show the Outside’s miseries to Weapons like us, when she never got to act them out? So brave Aunty had to finish off Penny’s prancing quick with spirits of salt, only silly Penny shoved the acid pot back at Aunty’s face when Aunty did it. Which was a very silly and selfish thing to do, because Aunty still needed her eyes, even if Penny didn’t. So Aunty – screaming in pain – with just about every demonmale ever grown setting a hunt on her, flew over the rainbow and came home to Mother, to serve the Goddess from the safety of the Garden. It really was about the best story of bravery there was, with the happiest of endings.

  Like I say, I tried to tell Annie this, but my tongue had gotten too loose for words. So I leaned against her shoulder, and I flopped my legs onto Nancy’s warm belly.

  Aunty opened up a pot and creamed her hands, and then she began her tale.

  And it ain’t no lie to say I heard a Polperroey giggle fly past me then, and seemed I went floating up to the ceiling, chasing after my sister Truly.

  THE MEANING OF ELIZABETH JONES

  WELL, JANE JONES walks all alive and easy into this room, like she ain’t never kept me waiting six days to talk War. My heart jumps up, and I pop Danny Zuko back under the soil, and brush my hair over my ears to look ready and waiting for business.

  ‘Hello sweetheart,’ she says, leaving her wash box on the floor and coming to sit on my bed. ‘How are you today?’

  I try not to look at her, but her voice makes me. She is still black and uncracked, I am happy to see. ‘I’ve been waiting six days for you to come,’ I say.

  ‘I’m afraid my mother had a fall, so I had to take some time off. But I remember you had some questions for me. We’ve got a few minutes now, if you like. But what happened to your leg?’

  ‘They brought a demonmale in here.’

  She looks something surprised. ‘A demon what?’

  ‘Yes, I know. So I had to run. Only my leg weren’t for it.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘So it broke again.’

  ‘Well, we’ll have you fighting fit soon enough,’ she says, smiling at me.

  I think about the meaning of this. I can see the sense in strengthening me up before anything is to start. I ain’t done a sit-up in must be three weeks.

  ‘I brought something to show you,’ she says, bringing out a photograph from her smock pocket. ‘Seeing as you were so interested when we spoke before.’

  Well.

  Well, I nearly drop down dead to Bowels to see it, I nearly do. The photograph is of three black-skinned girls. They are sitting on the ground in the daytime – without headscarves or hats. They are wearing tunics – that is all – and all their hands and arms, and legs and feet, and shoulders and heads and necks are out under the Sun.

  ‘My granddaughters. Elizabeth – on the left, holding up the starfish – she’s about your age.’

  Elizabeth has a pink tunic on, and she is smiling at me. Actually, she is squinting a bit because He is strong up there. But she don’t look worried. I look all careful over her black arms and legs and her face. And I look at Jane Jones. Then I look at Elizabeth again, and I realise why she is smiling so happy and headscarfless under the Sun. And my heart starts to flip in its box. Over and over it goes.

  Jane Jones is smiling too. ‘And that’s Janine, with the bucket, she’s nine. And Lottie, on the left, rolling in the sand, is six. She’s my youngest daughter’s daughter. A real little mischief-maker.’

  I look at the three black-skinned smiling girls, and I look at Jane Jones, and I am smiling, and my heart is jumping like it wants to come out forever. ‘It is very clever,’ I say, shaking my head at the cleverness of it. ‘You are breeding up girls who are protected like you.’

  ‘It’s not so easy to say who will be protected in life, honey. But I do my best to teach my granddaughters what I know.’

  I look at Elizabeth Jones again, and my eyes start fogging up.

  ‘What is it, sweetheart, have I upset you?’

  But sometimes tears run happy, don’t they?

  See, I look at these girls who are hatless, scarfless and furless under the Sun, but who are as uncookable as black-feathered crows, and I think something so wonderful I can only whisper it, ‘Are there other girls like this Outside?’

  Jane Jones hands me a tissue from her box. ‘Millions, sweetheart.’

  ‘And they are all black-skinned?’

  Jane Jones laughs. ‘Lots are, swee
theart.’

  And I’m shaking now. My heart is shaking up my whole body with the joy of it. There is a strip of Him scalding the bottom of the blind, like He wants to nosy in and interrupt us, but what do I care about Him? He’s the one needs to worry now!

  I can hear Mary Bootle singing through the walls, and when I stop shaking I will shout out, ‘Mary Bootle, it’s OK, it ain’t just us. There’s millions of girls being bred to fight. If you can hear Dorothy or Annie, tell them this – it ain’t just us, there are millions! All with special-protected skin! If you can speak to Dorothy, tell her to compute how many millions all these millions could kill off!’

  But I don’t shout just yet, because Jane Jones’s arms are wrapping me up in Gloriana tea roses. ‘It’s all right, dear. You’re quite safe here.’

  And I know it is all right. Everything is all right. And I want to say to her, ‘Well, yes, of course it is all all right now.’

  But I’m wrapped up so nice and rosy, that I don’t.

  PURPOSE

  ‘WHAT YOU DOING, Annie?’ I said. ‘What you doing hiding in here?’

  I tried to make the words slip out friendly, but they snagged in my throat.

  The barn door slammed behind me. I pulled off my headscarf and stood my torch on the ground in front of her. ‘I’ve been out hunting you everywhere.’

  ‘Oh hello, Clam,’ she said, squinting up. ‘It’s nice to see you.’

  Which I don’t need to tell no one, wasn’t no manner of excuse for being found squatting in one lonely torch puddle, in the petal bin corner of the supplies barn, in the middle of the Devil’s own night. Scrunched under a rack of drying Margaret Merril heads like a slug under leaves, so I had to look long and hard to find her. With about every gardening tool we ever had, heaped about her, and a pile of sacks too. No, I didn’t need to tell her, there weren’t no good reason for this at all.

  ‘Do you mind moving out of my light?’ she said.

  Well, I did, so I didn’t.

  ‘Why are you hunting me everywhere anyway?’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ I said, sniffing back a string of snot. Cold nights and the smell of drying roses made it pour fast. ‘I didn’t say I was hunting you everywhere, like I was following you everywhere, did I, Annie? Like I wanted to catch you? I didn’t say that at all.’

  She shoved a trenching spade in a sack. And then she spat on a piece of sack and held it out, smiling. ‘Looks like you’ve got chocolate on your smock.’

  ‘No I haven’t.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  I looked down at my smock. Aunty came spinning into my head, all black and white stripes of her, dressed like she was Showreeling My Fair Lady’s races. Aunty, holding a hamper and a red and green rug, just like she had a few hours ago, when I met her in the plum orchard on my way to compost the trees.

  Aunty had spun round singing, ‘Whoooah the hokey-cokey,’ and fallen on her rug, right next to Truly’s mound. ‘Yoohoo, Calamity Leek!’ she called. ‘What a perfect coincidence! Drop those poo buckets downwind, sweetie, and take a break. Toto, shift over and make room for our favourite niece. It is such a lovely day I thought I’d treat myself to a picnic, and you simply cannot have a picnic alone.’

  ‘How do you know it’s chocolate cake?’ I said to Annie.

  ‘I said, “looks like”. Looks like it was tasty, whatever it was.’

  ‘Feast your eyes on this whopper,’ Aunty had said. She opened a tin and pulled out the biggest brown cake I have ever seen. She winked and chopped it into triangles with a knife, and handed me one on a paper plate. Toto watched on, drooling. Aunty poured out tea from a flask. ‘Well, isn’t this nice, niece?’ She sipped her tea and winced. ‘I do believe I may enhance my beverage with something medicinal. I presume you’re going to pass on this occasion? Very wise. How’s the cake?’

  It was about the nicest thing I ever tasted.

  ‘Goodness, that went down quick, Calamity. You are a guzzle-gob, aren’t you? A moment on the lips, sweetie, that’s all I’m saying. Well, all right, go on then, take another slice. I promise I won’t tell.’

  This slice melted even more creamy than the first.

  Aunty handed me a napkin and winked, so I reckoned on it being safe to ask a question. So I said would there be cake like this in Heaven, and Aunty laughed and said of course, and there would possibly be something very similar for sale in the Outside World, and did I want to go there to fight the Good Fight?

  ‘Very much,’ I said.

  ‘And your sisters?’

  ‘Them too.’

  ‘All of them?’

  ‘For sure,’ I said.

  ‘That’s splendid news,’ Aunty said, giving her cakey fingers to Toto to lick up. ‘My pals battalion, led by my number one pal! You know, Calamity, I always knew you were the one for me. Never trust a pretty face, that’s what I said to myself. All the trouble in the world comes from pretty faces, Calamity. I shan’t mention names. An uglier world would be a more harmonious world, niece, I’m afraid it would. Chacun à sa place. Naturally, I’m telling you this in confidence, and naturally, there are degrees of unattractiveness, niece Leek. In fact, I don’t mind telling you, when you arrived, I informed your Mother that for all her derring-do, she could have had the decency to stop off in a lay-by and eject inferior goods. But deliberation was never her style – over-influenced by the ram-raid genre of her youth, I fear. She hasn’t changed. Years of pilfering in our dorm and getting away with it, so what do you expect? No one ever changes, Calamity. What can you do? What could I ever do for you lot, stuck in here?’

  Aunty had herself a long drink of medicine. ‘All I ever wanted was to make you girls happy. And tell me the truth, you are happy, aren’t you?’

  I looked up from drinking down my tea neat and proper like we need to.

  ‘Of course you are. It’s the most precious thing in the world – a happy childhood. And when you come to look back on it, Calamity dearest, I think you’ll know just how happy yours has been.’

  Aunty dug about in the hamper for a pot of pills to eat. ‘Where was I? Oh yes, when you turned up, I’m afraid I cursed High Heaven. Nothing personal, Calamity, time and money, and you looked a sure-fire waste of both. But then I took a second glance at those flappers of yours – sticking out sideways under a fetching blue bobble hat, if I recall – and do you remember what I said?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘I said whoopee! That’s what I said. Whoopeeeeeee! Because right then and there I knew we could be the best of friends. You see, niece, I knew there was simply no room for ambition in that pair of ears.’

  Aunty said, ‘Cheers,’ and she swallowed her pills with a big drink of medicine, and leaned over and tickled my left ear, and said would I like another slice? She wouldn’t tell anybody if I did, because pals didn’t tell. No, pals liked to share things, like cake. She went for the knife. Then she gasped and said she had something else she wanted to share with me. A secret. And it was this – we were all going to have a Trial Run, to get the blood flowing, so to speak. Mother had been going on and on about it for quite some time. And wasn’t that the best of news?

  Which it was.

  A woodlouse crawled along the base of a petal bin. I watched it trying to get up the slippy side. ‘You haven’t said what you’re doing here, Annie?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Well. What are you doing?’

  ‘Stuff.’

  ‘What stuff?’

  ‘Sorting stuff.’

  ‘That all?’

  ‘That’s all.’

  I looked at her. ‘Annie, you do want to go, don’t you?’

  She tapped a shovel and laid it down by the sack.

  ‘To War. You do want to go?’

  She picked up a spade and ran a finger along its edge. She put it down. She picked up her drawing board and wrote something on it, and then she turned the board and leaned it against the petal bin, its writing hidden away.

  Well. Wasn’t like I wa
nted to see her nonsense words, was it?

  ‘I have a secret too, you know, Annie.’

  ‘That’s nice for you.’ Annie picked up the shovel and put it in the sack.

  ‘Whoooah the hokey-cokey,’ Aunty sang. She took a drink of medicine, and waved at the big old Victoria plum. ‘Whoooah the hokey-cokey.’ The tree was starting to drop its yellow leaves on Truly’s mound. ‘Knees bent, legs stretched, that’s what it’s all about!’

  Aunty stopped singing and sighed. ‘Such a pretty spot.’ She waved a bluebottle away from her nose. ‘Pals like to share secrets,’ she said. ‘That’s what pals do.’ And her eye fixed on the cake as she cut out another fat triangle. ‘I wonder,’ she said. ‘I wonder I wonder I wonder.’ She placed the triangle onto a plate and lifted it up. ‘I wonder if any of my pals have any secrets to share.’

  I said, ‘I have a secret, Aunty.’

  ‘You do?’ Aunty gasped. Her teeth jumped all together in a smile. ‘What a pal you are! And?’ she said, looking at the cake slice and then at me, ‘And?’

  ‘Truly Polperro flew past me yesterday in the schoolroom.’

  The smile fell off Aunty’s teeth. The slice stayed up in the air between us.

  ‘Well, thank you, Calamity, that is good to know. I have a secret about Mother.’ Aunty jabbed me with her elbow, ‘She has halitosis.’ Aunty laughed loud. ‘And here’s another. She once ran away from her children’s home and was severely beaten by Father Tony when she was brought back. Explains a thing or two about her subsequent choices in life.’ She shook her head and laughed some more.

  After a bit Aunty stopped laughing, and the orchard stayed quiet, and the cake slice didn’t move, and Aunty’s eye swivelled and fixed something steady on me.

  So I said, ‘I have another secret.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘It’s about Kathy Selden.’

  ‘Oh,’ Aunty said. ‘Oh, I see.’ And she began lowering the plate – its slice all cut up and everything – back in the tin. ‘Just Kathy Selden?’

  ‘Well, there’s Annie St Albans in it too.’ Now don’t ask me why Annie popped on my tongue just then, but she did. And once she was there, well, she was there.