The First Book of Calamity Leek Page 17

  The Communicator broke down for a minute.

  It came back something dreamy. ‘In the meantime, take care of each other and be good little poppets for your Mother. And if she comes into the yard with any other body – even a demonmale, nieces, even that – you must promise me, not a peep from any of you. Lie back and play dead, dears. Think of it as Stealth Surveillance for War. Think of your dear Aunty who loves you so very much – think of her, and don’t move a muscle. Promise me, nieces. Promise me that.’

  The Communicator hiccuped. ‘I would like to sing “So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, adieu”, but I find my heart is not really in it. No, you see, nieces, I had a dream my life would be so different from the hell I’m living –

  So different now from what it seemed,

  Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.’

  And the Communicator died off.

  I looked about my sisters, their faces darkened by the first blankets of night.

  No one said nothing. At the standpipe, Sandra kept on with her tooth brushing. When she looked up, her eyes were as wet as my own felt. I blew my nose on my smock.

  Millie Gatwick caught hold of my hand. ‘Is Aunty well?’ she whispered.

  Well, there weren’t no easy answer to that, so I made none.

  Inside the dorm, we settled ourselves to stitching seams. Our needles worked quiet under the bulb, and our breath puffed out in wordless clouds, as we turned over the many strangenesses of the day. Seemed even Annie had nothing to say for once, but only raised her head with a smile to ask, ‘Scissors, please.’

  Must have been an hour into our labour, the silence was broken by a thudding on the balcony. Spiders fell from their beams onto our cushions. The High Hut’s steps clanged like a carcass was being chucked down them.

  We left our cushions and ran to peek between the planks of the wall. In the dark night we could just about see that it weren’t a carcass that landed on the concrete, but a case, bulging like a bloated belly. Aunty stepped down after it, coated up safe as a crow in her burka. In the High Hut above us, Toto was whining.

  Aunty took the handle and dragged the case along the yard. She slid the bolts across the dorm door.

  For about the first time that day, the smile fell off Annie’s lips. She ran to bang on the planks. ‘Aunty, I forgot to moisturise myself. Hadn’t I better come out and moisturise myself?’

  But Aunty had passed on by.

  Adelaide Worthing, who was still skinny enough to squeeze in the corner by the door, said she saw Aunty go in the schoolroom and turn on the light.

  ‘She’s got down the Appendix,’ Adelaide whispered. ‘She’s putting it in the case. She’s turned off the light. She’s coming out into the yard. She’s coming for the dorm.’

  Aunty came close to the door. Then she was too close for us to see anything but burka. But I could smell her. Her voice crawled medicinal through the wood. ‘Nieces, darling nieces, will you sing with me as I go?’

  ‘Shall we So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen goodbye you?’ I called out.

  ‘Thank you, niece – but no,’ Aunty’s voice whispered. ‘Let’s have I dreamed a dream in time gone by. Sing as I taught you, girls, locate the tune in the pit of your belly, but feel it in the chasm of your heart.’

  So we did, and I don’t mind saying it was something lovely.

  And while we sang, Aunty took up her case and left the yard.

  CALAMITY JANE

  IT HAS BEEN twenty-five days. That’s what I count when I am back in the white room after my bath, and Jane Jones has left me with Mrs Waverley and the demonmale. And I don’t need Dorothy shouting the maths to figure I should have fought lots of fights by now. But have I? No, I have not.

  So now I am clean, and something scented, thanks to Jane Jones’s gardenia cream, I give the demonmale on the chair a good look over.

  He sees me, course, and he smiles and says, ‘Did you enjoy your bath?’

  Happen Doctor Andrea Doors has told him to talk to me every day. Doctor Andrea Doors who says he is my father. Which I had to have a good laugh at, because it meant she reckons there are bits of him in me. Poor Doctor Andrea Doors whose brain is getting so melted, she can’t even see the danger she’s in, even when it’s sat right here in the room with her.

  Course, I don’t answer him. And Mrs Waverley blows her nose and asks me if I want her to comb my hair. Mrs Waverley, who Doctor Andrea Doors says I can call Mother, as if I didn’t have a perfect Heavenly one already. Mrs Waverley is holding his hand. Poor Mrs Waverley. This is one of the most terrible things about the Outside I need to get ready for – females with more fat than sense.

  I don’t answer her. I have a poke in the Milli Vanilli soil for Danny Zuko.

  And soon enough Mrs Waverley stops asking things, and settles down to just sitting her bottom still and holding hands with the demonmale and dabbing her nose. Which is all about as exciting as watching lard cool, it really is.

  But I will keep an eye on him. If I keep myself clean, there ain’t one reason why I can’t do it tonight, when Jane Jones has left a blade, course. Which feels good to know, it really does. I flex my fingers to fifty. And I stare at him. And like that, it pops into my head, a cold little thought. What if Jane Jones doesn’t bring a blade. What do I do then?

  But just then you come in, don’t you, Doctor Andrea Doors, and you sit down by my bed and say hello to Mrs Waverley and the demonmale all friendly, and you turn your smile on me, and say today you want to talk about damage and do I know what you mean?

  ‘Well, yes, you are looking very cracked today,’ I say. ‘Are you feeling hot inside your head, Doctor Andrea Doors?’

  You smile, and your eyes shoot out cracks everywhere, and you say it’s nice of me to ask, and you are feeling very well, thank you.

  So I have to sigh at this.

  You tell me you want to talk about Aunty, and what might happen when people get damaged as children.

  Except Aunty never damaged anyone, and I tell you that.

  You tilt your head about, like there’s a fly inside needs freeing. ‘That’s an interesting thought. But I’m afraid to say, Calamity, the woman you call Aunty has hurt some people. Do you have an idea who I might mean?’

  Course, I have to laugh at that. Because now I’ve heard everything from you, I really have. But I’m not saying nothing, because you’re fishing for what isn’t yours to catch.

  ‘What would you say if I said I believe your Aunty has hurt you, Calamity, in ways you might not want to think about?’

  Round about now, I pull up the sheet and shroud myself. And even though you bring your head close and ask am I OK, because I haven’t done this in days, I ain’t saying. Because I am thinking. I am thinking of what Jane Jones said, ‘Oh, goodness me, sweetheart, you don’t need a knife,’ I am thinking that. And my heart starts battering in its box. And now I start trying for one hundred finger clenches, into fists and out to stars. In and out. In out in out in out. Strong enough for throttling a cockerel. And who knows what else.

  After a bit you say goodbye and go.

  Mrs Waverley speaks. She says she has brought in Calamity Jane to watch on a television, if I want.

  I have a think for a while. ‘Alrighty,’ I shout out from under the sheet, ‘you can watch and learn from her, if you want to, but keep it quiet out there.’

  Because me, I’m staying safe in grey, because I am preparing myself.

  It goes on for about forever, Mrs Waverley’s Calamity Jane. And, course, it ain’t the proper one. It is full of shouting nonsense, and I can’t even hear Aunty in it nowhere. All I can hear is Mrs Waverley laughing all the way through. It is a sloppy laugh she makes. Like injuns and snared females are laughing matters. But, like I said, poor Mrs Waverley is near enough senseless, so it can’t be helped, it really can’t.

  When it is all finished, and the demonmales are carting married-off Calamity Jane and Katie Brown to Thrust to death, I pop back out. Mrs Waverley is still grinning
at the television. Now that she is not snotting, her tear ducts ain’t puffed so bad at all.

  I am something curious.

  ‘Have you been married off?’ I ask.

  ‘Oh yes, darling.’ She squeezes the hand of the demonmale. ‘We’ve been married sixteen years.’

  He grins. It stretches something demonic from his hairy mouth to his ears.

  And for one rabbiting second I think I will scream at her for this stupidity. And I will throw this pencil at his nasty hand to chop it off hers. But then I don’t. No, I don’t do nothing but turn away. And I clench my throttling fingers in and out, in and out, and I wait.

  When Mrs Waverley unpeels her bottom from the chair and says it’s time for them to go, I say it, I do. ‘You can leave him in here,’ I say.

  And Mrs Waverley says, ‘Really?’

  And he whispers, ‘Are you sure?’

  I fix my eyes on his. They are filling so wet it makes me sick to see. ‘Yes.’

  Mrs Waverley throws me a mighty smile and hugs him up in her fat. She says goodnight and leaves us.

  We are all alone now.

  ‘You don’t know how happy this makes me,’ he says. He is smiling and crying and smiling and crying.

  I make my mouth make a smile back at him. And I curl up just one finger.

  And at last I say the words we practised in so many lessons – ‘Come on over, big boy. Let’s get down to business.’

  A DEMONMALE VISITOR

  NOW, I SHOULD probably tell you this. It was the night Aunty left us that Emily started talking to me.

  It was while I was stitching seams on my second cushion cover she started it.

  And first off, I should say this wasn’t no ways surprising, because she flew about speaking regular to Mother, didn’t she? She didn’t always sit dumbed up in her Sacred Lawn statue all day long. And who would want to stay there, when you could pop off down to the yard and see how your weapons were doing? And when your weapons weren’t doing very well at all, wouldn’t you want to go and cheer them up?

  And I should also say, it weren’t nothing amazing she said to me at first. See, Emily didn’t need to squawk like a bantam for the whole yard to hear, when she knew I’d listen up to her good and proper.

  It was answers she gave me first.

  See, that night as I stitched my seams, I had so many questions flying about my head. Questions that went crashing at my brain walls like senseless flies, and wouldn’t ever settle. I didn’t know what to do about them. I had no idea at all, until I felt a buzz in my left ear.

  ‘What’s that?’ I said, scratching my earhole.

  ‘You’ll see, sister,’ a voice whispered.

  ‘Emily?’ I said.

  ‘You’ll see, sister,’ the voice said. Now, don’t ask me how I knew it was Emily buzzing in there, but I did. And my heart began to batter in its box. So I asked her quick.

  ‘Aunty isn’t going into another Great Depression, is she?’

  ‘You’ll see, sister.’

  ‘Will this demonmale Sam cause us trouble?’

  ‘You’ll see, sister.’

  ‘Will Aunty come back soon to help with Annie?’

  ‘You’ll see, sister.’

  ‘But when is soon, Emily?’

  ‘Emily?’

  ‘Emily?’

  But no matter how I shook my head about, that was it for buzzing. So I reckoned Emily had probably gone off back to her Sacred Lawn statue to sleep.

  ‘Will you shut up muttering nonsense,’ Nancy said, turning off in her straw.

  But never mind Nancy, it was a good thing, knowing Emily was alive and well, and ready to help her weapons good and proper. And I settled to sleep thinking maybe it weren’t so terrible – Aunty being gone while Annie was in danger – because in her answers to me, Emily would know what to do to help us all.

  Course, Annie, I am sorry to have to tell you, spent about half the night going up and down by the door like a boxed-in rat. The other half she spent drawing. Sat up in her straw, with a torch jammed under her chin, and that cat curled on her lap, she scratched at her board long after the light went off.

  I watched her at it a while, then I rolled over Truly’s straw to her. ‘What you drawing, Annie?’

  Annie turned her board where I could see it under her torchlight. A thin face stared at me. Short-haired. Even-eyed. ‘I’ve drawn his chin a bit square, and his hair’s softer for real, but the rest is about right.’ Sparks were dancing in her eyes. ‘That’s him. That’s Sam.’

  Well, I rolled away from that board, fast as I could.

  On my left, Nancy and Mary were balled up uncrackable as a nut. Down the row, my younger sisters were sighing or fighting demonmales in their sleep. Annie turned off her torch and laid down her board. She turned to cosy against Dorothy.

  And all sudden – and maybe it was Aunty leaving us, or Emily popping by, or happen it was just rolling over Truly’s cold space – it was all I could do not to cry. I wrapped myself in a furball and tried to put Truly’s giggling voice in my head, counting skinned rabbits to sleep. But she didn’t come.

  In the morning, long after we’d ‘Home Sweet Homed’ every one of our cushion covers, and the pigs next door had given up bothering us for food we couldn’t give them, and Annie had just about worn a ditch in the concrete with her pacing by the door, an electric screech sounded outside.

  Straight off, Annie glued her eye to a crack in the planks. ‘It’s Mother! She’s driving through the Glamis Castles! She’s heading for the yard.’

  ‘Remember what Aunty said,’ I hissed. ‘We should lie back and play dead.’

  But Annie carried on like she hadn’t heard me. Like always. ‘Looks like there’s a demonmale following her chair! It’s dressed like one. Walks like one. And about the right size.’

  So each and every one of my sisters gasped and jumped up and ran to press an eye against planks.

  ‘Come back, sisters!’ I hissed. ‘We’re supposed to lie down!’

  Nancy turned and spat back, ‘And Devil’s turd, Clam, if you ain’t forgotten we’re supposed to shut up.’

  So there weren’t nothing for it, but for me to crawl to a leftover crack near the floor and blow out a weevil, and watch two trouser legs and two feet in beetling black shoes follow the wheels of Mother’s electric chair into our yard. I waited for Mother to take out a blade and kill him off. But she killed off the chair. And she started talking.

  ‘Fascinating character, that Ophelia Swindon,’ Mother started saying. ‘If one recalls correctly – and one generally does – she was fostered here in our adolescent years. One doesn’t mind saying all this news comes as a frightful shock, Inspector. Llandudno, was it, the sighting? Tip-off at the paper?’

  The demonmale spoke. His voice was low. Most probably he was trying for Charming, not knowing he had no hope with Mother, who would not be Charmed again by his sort, as the Appendix says it – Never ever ever in her short-legged life. Not on your nelly. No bloody way José. Nein nicht nie non no.

  The demonmale said something about being unable to confirm anything at the moment. I wanted to ask Nancy, who was standing at a good-size hole above me, if she could see his hands tied up behind his back, ready for the blade.

  ‘No chance it’s a case of mistaken identity?’ Mother said.

  The demonmale said he couldn’t comment at this stage.

  Mother sighed. ‘Hers was a deplorable crime, one knows that much. A vindictive, jealous act.’ Mother didn’t mind saying one remembered an envious streak in her, even in the adolescent years. Mother said one remembered reading about that poor actress’s injuries at the time. Such a talent wasted. Even Mother, with all she had suffered – and Heaven alone knew how she had suffered – even she knew the importance of not taking the law into one’s own hands. And if anyone had just cause, one did, didn’t she, Inspector?

  The demonmale said he couldn’t comment on her case either.

  ‘Well, one assures you, Inspector, one has
n’t seen the woman in thirty years. One had heard a rumour she’d fled to the Côte d’Azur, but one assumes you’ve pursued that lead already. However, one can state for the record, that one is more than happy to oblige with the investigation, in any way one can. As you see, this yard is where the cows are kept. Marvellous for the orphans to foster some sort of connection with nature.’

  Mother’s voice stopped. I waited for the scream to say the blade had stuck him. Most probably it would be in the throat. Or, if his hands were tied behind, she might split him down the belly – chin to tool.

  The demonmale asked her about the orphans. He understood she’d taken some in, after her own tragedy.

  ‘Modesty prevents one from harping on, Inspector, but you make a fair point. One’s own grief and suffering did become a spur to noble deeds. A Mother’s love is boundless, Inspector. It cannot be packed away or bottled up as though it never existed. So one thought, why not? Why not share one’s maternal bounty – and this magnificent estate – with those who have none? They’re on pilgrimage at the moment. In the Steps of St David along the Pembrokeshire coast. One hears they’re rather loving it, despite the rain.’

  The demonmale said that sounded nice for them, and his wife had got him a potpourri pillow in Betws. Which Mother answered, ‘Very good of her to support one’s little enterprise. One doesn’t like to gripe, but Vatican funding really isn’t what it was.’

  And now there was another pause, and I was sure Mother was going to do it, when Nancy gasped. ‘He’s heading this way.’

  I watched the demon shoes step closer on the concrete.

  Mother’s chair raced in front.

  I wanted to say, ‘Don’t even breathe, sisters,’ but my throat had sealed itself up.

  ‘Just the old cow stalls down here, Inspector,’ Mother said, swerving and parking Motherly between him and us. ‘An absolute wreck, but the little angels love to come and play, so what can one do? Although one does keep it bolted to try to discourage them.’

  There was silence. I figured the demonmale’s feet weren’t more than a pig length away. ‘What’s happening?’ I mouthed to Nancy. ‘Is Mother doing it? Why’s it so quiet? Tell me, Mother must be doing it now.’