The First Book of Calamity Leek Read online

  ‘Ta-dah! Get a squizz at that, nieces!’ She flicked her wrists. ‘Call me a genius! One hundred and ten per cent protection, I’d say!’

  What floated down wasn’t black like the one Aunty puts on when she has to go Outside sometimes. It was blue, like Emily’s cloak. ‘Actually, this one’s an old tablecloth I begged off your Mother,’ Aunty said, ‘but I’ve cut a slit for your eyes, so it’ll give you a fair impression of the real thing.’

  For the rest of that day we elder nieces had turns in it round the yard. Course, Mary spun about and made herself dizzy, and Dorothy tripped over the hem, and Annie – who had already started with her ‘Why this’ and ‘why that’ nonsense, and which we didn’t know was only going to grow more dangerous, the more sad she got about Truly – well, Annie kicked up yard concrete and said she didn’t want to put it on at all. But I’ll tell you this, I ain’t never ever felt so safe my whole life. And I’ll tell you this too – my ears didn’t even touch the sides.

  But, see, it ain’t so bad, this new pot on my leg, because even if I can’t run off and start things just yet, it meant a few of my leftover sisters came to see me. I wasn’t the most lively of the lot, seeing as I was mostly sleeping. But I remember they did tiptoe in, my sisters. I remember them smelling good and proper of themselves – of straw and compost, beeswax and pigs – a smell settled too deep in their bones for this new world to scrub out. Annie left me a pretty Milli Vanilli shrub rose in a pot. And that wasn’t all. There was a purple wireworm hiding under the mulch. I put him on my finger today, when no one was here to see. I am going to name him Danny Zuko.

  SHOWREEL

  WE BURIED TRULY in the plum orchard, which was always her favourite place.

  Aunty said, ‘Put her where you like, as long as you dig it deep enough.’

  Annie said she’d probably like to lie under the tallest Victoria plum tree and feel them fruit bombs dropping on her.

  I said putting her in the middle of the orchard was a good thing, because if she sat up out of the soil one night, there was no way she’d be able to see the Wall and feel foolish about climbing up it and dying off so careless. Course, I said that to get a smile from my sisters, who were busy sobbing and sticking strawdoll Trulys in her grave, and whispering about her possible ascension to Heaven, like happened to Emily. But it wasn’t the bone-marrow truth, what I said about Truly sitting up. No, the real truth I read from page D of the Appendix the night after we buried her, while we sat stuffing petals into ‘Home Sweet Home’ cushions in the dorm.

  ‘I am sorry to say it,’ I said, ‘but today there’s a new page stuck in D for Deserter – saying Truly has most probably been dragged straight down to Bowels. It says, “Just you remember this, nieces – no one ever gets to Heaven without fighting the Good Fight first on Earth. Which is what Deserter means.”’

  ‘Isn’t that set down good and clear for us, Annie?’ I said, looking where she wasn’t stuffing her quota of cushions, because she was lying face down in Truly’s straw.

  Annie said nothing.

  ‘So, Truly’s being cooked up for Him right now?’ Millie whispered.

  ‘Most likely, I’m afraid.’

  Which was very sad news for her, and for three days the Goddess Daughter threw grey sheets over the sky lid and cried non-stop. And we did too. And after this Aunty said, ‘No use crying over spilt milk and ruining valuable tear ducts. Time to accentuate the positive. Eliminate the negative. Aka dry up.’

  So we did.

  Days went by. Winter snuck into the Garden. Trees dropped their leaves and died off. The last of the roses died off. Grubs did too. The duty list doubled. Close combat sessions tripled. Our weekly cushion quota increased to sixty. There was harvesting to finish, the yard fence wanted painting, and the latrines disinfecting. Cloth had to be stitched into winter smocks for those who would still be around to wear them, and rabbit traps needed setting for skins to patch up our old fur coats. Like this, more days went by.

  To our lunchtime ablutions, Aunty added Exfoliation with a fistful of gravel in straw. To evening moisturising, double beeswax portions were given to us eldest. ‘It’s the Final Countdown!’ Aunty said. ‘Don’t cry for me, Argentina! Reading, writing and arithmetic will be scrapped forthwith for all eldest nieces. Mother herself has requested afternoons to be dedicated to Fight Revision. Action stations!’

  We elder sisters practised Snogging, Slow Dancing and Groping, like Aunty showed us, because that was how demonmales would expect the Fight to begin when they met us Outside. Then we did Judo and Jabbing-of-Blades-in-Bales, like Mother ordered, which is how we’d finish them off. Seeing as Truly weren’t here, Aunty said Annie should practise snogging with me. Which was nice, I told Annie, because she really had the softest lips of us all. And never mind that she didn’t say much to me saying that, nor didn’t bother shifting her lips much either, she really kissed nicest of all.

  Only after all this Revision did our younger sisters join us on the schoolroom floor in front of the television screen, to listen to Aunty’s daily Tale from the Archive and watch a Showreel lesson on the Outside World.

  Now, like I’ve most probably told you already, this Showreel lesson was made special by Aunty to show us sisters the real truth of women’s tragic lives on Earth. So, though it starts off happy, with Aunty showing us a female called Cinderella and her loving sisters sharpening knives, quicksharp Aunty shows us another one called Sleeping Beauty, waking up all dozy from a good old sleep, and getting snogged straight off. Before she’s even washed her face or changed her smock, she’s been trapped in marriage. After this, the Showreel gets worse, with injuns fighting poor old Calamity Jane, and demonmales fighting poor old Fantine on the barricades. And after all this, it’s worst of all, because brave Aunty actually meets the Devil. Yes, poor Aunty has to pop off the stage and ends up running through the Earth’s Bowels, because the Devil has stuck on a cloak and mask and is chasing after her, saying he only wants to sing once again with her a strange duet.

  Course, the Showreel ends happy, thank goodness, with Aunty and that fleabag dog travelling safe over the rainbow to a pretty Garden like ours. And thank goodness for us all for that. And like Aunty always said, and like I’ll tell you now, that Showreel lesson was sixty minutes of the purest education on the Outside, and we always ended with a sing-song. And about the best song we ever sang Aunty called ‘Never underestimate a woman’s touch’. And sometimes she winked at me as we sang it, and in my head I promised I never would. And those demonmales better watch out.

  But never mind me telling you all this, what I only meant to tell you is Annie weren’t interested in a happy sing-song no more. No. Ever since Truly died, Annie weren’t interested in nothing but the Devil and His Bowels, which she always crawled up close to the screen to see when He appeared. She said it was to keep an eye on the cloaks and masks He uses when He takes on human form. But I knew it was really because it gave the best view of Bowels. Annie was watching to see if Truly would pop up anywhere down there. But she never did.

  More days went by. Nights turned colder. Maria Liphook stayed unbothersome down her Hole. Aunty taught us a new song about demonmale seduction-through-dancing called ‘Singing in the Rain’, and a cat came to live with us. We called her Kathy Selden. Though Millie tried on drowning Kathy Selden down the latrines, seeing as Gretel rat still hadn’t turned up, and though Annie was more interested in sitting under plum trees than talking to anyone most days – not even them sisters who went to sit with her – it really wasn’t a lie to say proper peace was returning to our Garden. Yes it was.

  GRETEL’S BABIES

  ‘YOU KNOW, SOMETIMES of a day, I forget her,’ I said to Annie.

  We two were in the vegetable field, west of the yard, spending the morning pulling up turnips for winter storage. It was nice to be two, except that Kathy Selden cat had followed along, because, I am sorry to say, she didn’t like to do nothing better than turf up worms.

  I planted my fork and wiped
my nose, keeping my face hid from a most uncommon Sunny day. ‘I mean, with us elders getting ready to be unleashed for War. And now that Baby Sainsbury’s is here.’

  Mother had brought her in three days ago.

  ‘One wasn’t able to resist it,’ she said to Aunty when she drove into the yard, the baby all tucked up in a blue basket on Mother’s lap. ‘It was parked up in frozen foods, like it had one’s name written all over it. There was something, just something, in the shape of the ears that one thought might develop.’

  Aunty pointed at the purple blotch over the baby’s left cheek and smiled and asked Mother how her Ladyship thought that might develop? After that, Aunty said ‘Excuse me,’ and she curtseyed at Mother and turned and spat on the yard and climbed back up to the High Hut, because she felt sick and she was also something lost for words.

  Mother left the basket by the sundial, and drove her chair out the gate.

  And on the viewing balcony, Aunty watched Mother go off north, and then she found her words.

  Too many risks were being taken. At a time for lying low and making final preparations. This was yet another one above and beyond the Agreed Deal. Mother was Damaged. Disturbed. Dim. Did you forget about the Llandudno Gazette, Sieve Brain? Never the Sharpest Doll in the Dorm, were you? What pretty little Gennie wants, pretty Gennie always gets. Not this bloody time. You can bloody well take it back before The Bloody Cops Come Knocking. Aunty was not speaking to Mother until that happened. No Bloody Way, José, she wasn’t. Otherwise Aunty would chuck it over the Wall and Don’t Think She Wouldn’t! Oi, Klepto! Take it back! Oi, a Deal’s a Deal!

  Those were Aunty’s words.

  Aunty went into the High Hut, slamming the door.

  And Mary Bootle scooped up Baby Sainsbury’s basket and ran off out the yard.

  Baby Sainsbury’s was sleeping in Nursery Cottage now, in her own cot because she was too small to join the toddlers’ mattress. The Pontefracts were taking care of her, which had Mary Bootle sucking her plaits something sour – when she wasn’t sneaking over to the Cottage to sing ‘Hushabye Mountain’ through the window to it.

  One morning, when I had a barrow of Icebergs to take to the supplies barn, I went along to have a look myself. Not the healthiest place to live, weren’t Nursery Cottage, with the air trapped up against walls of solid brick and windows of glass. Still, I popped my face to a window and watched the second-winders playing on the floor with our old dolls, and Baby Sainsbury’s sleeping in her cot in the corner. It was clear and certain she wasn’t ever going to grow into Emily’s Spitting Image – not with that purple blotch on her cheek. But never mind that, because she was rescued now, and she would grow safe and uncooked to fight the Good Fight and ascend to Heaven.

  And secretly – though we were supposed to wait for Aunty to choose her first name, and it might be a while, because none of the second wind toddlers had been given one, because Aunty said you didn’t name a dog you were going to take back to the park – I named her after Calamity Jane’s friend, Katie Brown. She had the same black eyelashes. ‘Never underestimate a woman’s touch, Katie Sainsbury’s,’ I whispered through the window. And her sleeping eyelashes flickered back at me, like she was answering, ‘OK then, Clam, fine with me, Katie Sainsbury’s it is.’

  I didn’t see Baby Sainsbury’s much after that, because like I said, we elders were set to harvesting, and the Pontefract twins were taking care of her. And now me and Annie were in the turnips, and Annie’s green eyes were fixed hard as the sky lid on me.

  ‘Who, Clam? Some days you forget who?’

  ‘Well, Annie, happen you know who.’

  JAM! went Annie’s fork in the ground. All morning she hadn’t been so much digging up roots, as spearing for soil fish.

  ‘I mean, Annie, all I mean is some times of the day I don’t think on her. That’s all. Is that bad? That the gaps in my head are filling in so soon? Only I looked all through the Appendix and it don’t say nothing on this.’

  Annie crouched down to pull a turnip off her prongs, her headscarf sliding back from her brow.

  ‘Annie?’

  She snorted.

  ‘Annie?’ Weren’t like our sister dying off was one for laughing about.

  ‘I bet Maria Liphook hasn’t.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Forgotten her.’

  ‘Can she? Can she remember not to forget? Staying in her Hole so long?’

  Annie’s eyes crackled. ‘Why do you think she’s staying in her Hole?’

  JAM! went her fork in the soil.

  ‘Watch out, Annie!’

  But it speared a baby pumpkin that wasn’t for harvesting yet.

  Annie threw down her fork. ‘Stupid pumpkins! Isn’t like they do anything but rot off. Grow up and rot off.’

  And with that nonsense said, Annie was stamping off down the crop row, faster than a flat-foot duck. Kathy Selden looked up from trapping a sorry little weevil in her paws, and bounced off after her.

  ‘I’ll see to the rest of the row on my own then, shall I, Annie?’

  But happen Annie St Albans’s ears weren’t best-shaped for hearing me, because she just kept on.

  I watched her go, her headscarf flapping loose behind. At the end of the field she didn’t turn left down the path back to the yard, but stamped off for the plum orchard.

  ‘Wait up, Annie,’ I shouted.

  But she didn’t.

  I thought to catch her at Truly’s mound, rearranging strawdolls or the Boule blossoms stuck up in the soil. Either that or tidying off dropped plum leaves, or leaving a fresh plum near Truly’s mouth, or straightening the pebbles on the tricky Os of the words she had laid out along the mound – TRULY POLPERRO IS HERE.

  ‘Annie?’ I called, running through the trees. ‘Annie, where are you?’

  But Annie wasn’t about.

  No, Annie had stamped herself all the way out of the orchard, and was heading off west through that nasty nettle patch known as nothing nicer than Sting Alley. There weren’t but an acre of stinking bog ahead.

  Well, I thought, watching from the orchard, that’ll be an end on it.

  But Devil melt my eyeballs if Annie didn’t pop out the other side of the nettles, and go plunging her feet into the bog, where there weren’t nothing but fizzing horseflies and rotting ferns. Where there weren’t nothing to stop a sister being sucked down non-stop through bog to Bowels at any second. That’s where Annie went – stepping her feet into most dangerous bog. Without tying down her headscarf. Without even lifting up her smock. With a striped cat bouncing after.

  Well.

  Well, weren’t nothing for it now. I pulled my headscarf low, and hurried on after.

  ‘It weren’t true, Annie,’ I shouted out. ‘What I said about Truly. Only in the first half of a breath or a swallow of pigstew, I ain’t thinking on her, Annie. I miss her something sore night-times. Come back, will you, Annie? The bog ain’t no place to go stamping. The bog’s Out of Bounds, ain’t it? Ain’t it, Annie? Annie, please come back.’

  But Annie didn’t hear me.

  A pair of crows flapped past, laughing loud. And I stopped and scratched my knee of a nettle sting, and I watched that skinny body stamp off through the wild bog, and I thought, well, when has she ever heard me? I thought backwards, and I couldn’t think of one time. Even when we were new-rescued and busy crying, and Aunty brought toys for us, so she got some peace and quiet for ten minutes, well, even then, Aunty said she remembered little Annie didn’t think nothing of ripping up her sister Calamity’s doll to see its insides, no matter that her new sister was crying, ‘Please don’t, you’ve seen inside the others, please not this last one too.’

  That’s the truth that Aunty said to me in confidence after I started seeing her for tea and book readings. And the truth was and always will be, Annie St Albans was made with ears that would hear nothing but just what they wanted. And a mouth that would sing different words to a song if it chose. And she had a body that never went nowhere wi
thout Truly Polperro. And that was the bone-marrow truth of Annie St Albans.

  I watched her elbows chopping the air. Seemed she wasn’t heading for nowhere but the western Wall. With not one cloud cushion above and only the skinniest rind of Wall shade about. Well. Weren’t like we needed anyone else going up Walls, was it?

  So weren’t nothing for it then but for me to race on over through that stinking bog, jump for Annie’s headscarf and get it tugged safe over her brow.

  Annie hit me off. ‘Don’t!’

  ‘Well, all right, Annie.’

  She jerked her head back, even though I weren’t touching her no more. ‘I said don’t.’

  ‘Well, Annie, I only—’

  ‘Just don’t.’

  ‘Annie?’

  I thought to say, ‘It ain’t sisterly to drag me – and that cat too – deep into Out of Bounds stinking bog with the winter Sun still something dangerous above, and then go hitting me when I try to protect you, Annie.’ But then I didn’t say that. ‘Don’t think I haven’t noticed you not talking to me these last days, Annie,’ is what I said.

  She looked at me. ‘Oh yes? And you never think on why I don’t?’

  ‘I know you miss Truly something sore.’

  ‘You never think on why I don’t talk to you?’

  ‘Happen I don’t. Should I, Annie?’

  And she spat. But not at me. Down into the bog.

  I watched her toe stir that spit in deep, and my eyes started to fog up. ‘Annie?’

  She sucked a breath in, and let it slide out without one word on top.

  ‘Annie?’

  And she looked up from her spit to me, and her eyes were bright as ice. ‘Never mind, Clam.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s just something Nancy said.’

  ‘What did Nancy say?’

  Annie swiped at her eyes. They were spilling over.

  ‘Annie, what did Nancy say?’