The Carhullan Army (11 page)

Jackie sat in the chair next to me again. ‘Might taste a bit funny to you,’ she said, ‘but it gets better the longer you eat the stuff. That’s butter on it, for a bit of winter insulation. You look OK to me, but the girls here have to put on a few pounds this time of year or they start getting run down.’ I nodded, picked up the spoon, and began to eat. It was scalding hot and burned the roof of my mouth and the tender spots inside my cheeks, but I was too hungry to care. I worked air into the mouthful to cool it down and swallowed. Jackie leaned over and poured the milk into the bowl. As she did so her arm brushed past me. Her vest smelled of utility, like the proofed fibres of a cagoule. She put the jug to her lips and drank the last inch.

I felt self-conscious in the bed, eating so hurriedly, and only half dressed, with one breast covered by the sling and the other exposed. I was aware of how vulnerable I must appear, and had already proved myself to be. I’d been run through the mill because of it. We were now in civil proximity, Jackie Nixon and I, and the atmosphere was one of diplomacy, but I also understood that it had been her choice to incarcerate me initially; it was her voice I had heard in the darkness, committing me to my term in the hot, stinking shed.

She had been ruthless then. Now she was giving me a reprieve, making a truce perhaps. She was even waiting on me. Her actions were not designed to intimidate, but nevertheless I felt nervous in her company. She was a woman I had wanted to meet for a long time; a woman who was indigenous, who had built up an extreme rural enterprise and kept it going for almost two decades, while all around her things had broken down. Face to face, I could see there was a durability to her appearance, a worn and coarsened exterior. And she had poise, the look of someone in power, someone to whom others would bow.

She raised one leg onto the chair, bringing the boot into the back of her thigh. ‘Well, where to start, Sister? I’m sure there’s a lot you can tell us. But you’ve probably got a fair few questions to ask too.’ She raised her eyebrows, waiting for me to respond. I finished the oatmeal first, unable to stop eating it, and set the tray to one side. The lethargy I had shrugged off came warmly back as the food hit my system, but I was determined to stay sharp. ‘How many of you are there?’ I asked. Her eyes narrowed. ‘Sixty-four,’ she said. ‘As of eight weeks ago, that is. You saw our littlest one out of the window I take it.’

She did not wait for me to confirm that I had before continuing. ‘She’s called Stella. The second generation is bigger than we’d imagined it would be. You’ve met the oldest of them already – Megan. She knocked seven shades out of you apparently. Bit excitable. We’ve not had anyone to try out the system on before you. She’ll no doubt apologise at some stage, or maybe she won’t, it wasn’t personal, was it? That tough little bitch is trained as well as it gets.’ I saw a shine in her eyes, the glitter of pride perhaps. ‘So, you’ll go to her if there’s a problem between the two of you. Don’t come to me with it. The way it works here is everyone resolves their shit at source, face to face. That’s just how we run things. OK?’ She crossed her arms and the chair creaked as she leant back into it. ‘All the births have been manageable, thanks to Sister Lorry. We only lost one, and that was before she came.’

I took a slice of apple from the dish on the tray and bit into it. It was sweet, crisp and full of juice. It was the most delicious fruit I had tasted for years. Jackie noticed the pleasure on my face. ‘Yeah, that’s an Egremont russet. Aren’t they lovely? It’s warm enough up here to get them now. We’ve a good crop this year. And look. They’ve cut it up for you in case you can’t chew, busted up as you are. They’re good lasses.’ She reached over, stole a slice and winked at me. ‘We’ll all be sick of them come December. But not the
wine
.’ She drew out the word, letting her voice hum over its cadence. It was a swift and playful change of tack, and her whole demeanour altered. I felt suddenly charmed by her. Then as quickly as it had arrived, the banter was gone and her face hardened again.

There was a fierceness about her, something amplified and internalised, an energy that my father would have described as Northern brio. Growing up in Rith, I had seen girls with this same quality. They had carried knives and had scrapped outside the school gates with little concern for their clothes and their looks, and there was an absence of teasing when they flirted with men. Jackie looked like a more mature and authentic version. Sitting beside me she seemed too inanimate for her voltage, too kinetic under her restfulness. It was as if her skin could barely contain the essence of her.

I wondered what the other women at the farm made of her. For all its equalities, and whatever formula the place ran on, it had been apparent from the first night that Carhullan operated a system of control; a hierarchy was in place, and Jackie Nixon’s orders were obeyed. She was the superior. The alpha. As she sat watching me in the bed, I thought about all those who had walked up the slopes, a decade and a half before, knowing her name. Over the years she must have achieved some kind of mystical status as one of Carhullan’s founders. I had still not seen the other.

It surprised me that they had not come in together to give me the low-down on the place. I swallowed the last piece of apple and wiped my mouth. ‘Where’s Veronique? Can I meet her?’ Jackie’s chin was resting on her hand. She dropped it an inch and pressed her knuckles to her mouth. Then she clenched her uneven teeth. A wave of tension ran though her forehead. ‘No. She’s dead, Sister.’

Jackie met my gaze for as long as it lasted. I could not hold her eyes. I shook my head and looked towards the window. ‘She’s been dead three years.’ There was an uncomfortable pause. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, looking back at her. I wanted to say more, but the grin she had on her face jolted me from making anything but the briefest of condolences. It was a terrible expression and I couldn’t tell if it was genuine or not. I thought that she must be joking, and at any moment she would apologise for having a black sense of humour and say that Vee was out on the farm with the others. But she did not. The smile held, becoming gross and manic. Her cold clear eyes held no mirth in them. ‘Life goes on,’ she said, ‘beloved or bastardised.’

I knew then that she was serious. I felt a shiver pass through the pores of my skin, though the autumn sun shone into the bedroom with a warm cidery light. The nipple of my breast felt tight and hard against my inner arm, and the flesh of my chest was suddenly chilly and damp. I tried to pull the sheets up around me but they were trapped under the tray.

Jackie observed my discomfort. Her face relaxed out of its grimace and she stood up. ‘You’ll see how it all works soon enough. We’re strict, but things are pretty straightforward. We’re all sticky up here. I know you know that, Sister, and I know that’s why you’re here.’ She paused, as if to let me register what she had just said, but her words seemed oddly confidential and coded, as if she was speaking to someone else, someone who knew more than I did about the place I had come to.

She went on with the cursory induction. ‘If you’re after it, your shampoo and roll-on are in the pokey with our soap supplies. I’m afraid they won’t last long once word gets out. We’re not a heavily deodorised institute. The hole is last on the left, spare paper’s in there. Three sheets max for a shit. Take a tub of Vaseline from the pokey too, and don’t forget to use it. Sister Lorry is going to come in and look you over later today. She’ll talk to you about getting that bit of rubbish out of you.’

Her attitude fell through another revolution again. She put her hands on her hips and stood squarely in the room. ‘Listen. I don’t care if you are a murrey, just don’t put it about, eh? I don’t need these bitches squabbling over new cunt. Not now.’ She licked the corners of her mouth and stepped towards the door. ‘It’s fine if you want to go back to sleep for a bit,’ she said, nodding her head, and it did not seem like I was being offered a choice. Then she left the room, closing the door behind her, and this time I could not hear her footsteps moving away.

Once she had gone I stared at the stripped knotted wood of the door panels. My shoulder felt sore again and I realised I was completely tense. I tried to relax. But somehow I felt upbraided. And I was perplexed by Jackie Nixon’s many faces. She had passed through arrangements of humour and pragmatism, lightness and invective, as she presented herself, as she covered those matters she wanted to discuss. There were gaps in her elucidation of the farm’s fellowship, and I wanted to know more. She hadn’t mentioned my gun, or the photographs of her I had kept in my tin. And she hadn’t apologised for my being locked up.

No. She had not welcomed me exactly. But what she had done, without my having to apply officially, was make it clear to me that I could stay at Carhullan. At least for the time being.

*

From the bedroom window I had been watching small groups of women running furtively up the ridge, scaling its steep sides and attempting to gain the summit without being seen by the two sentries stationed at the cairn. Some of them appeared to be carrying wooden shafts in their hands. Others lay back behind stands of gorse, waiting for a signal. It seemed an impossible objective, such extreme sniping, until one figure managed to cross a craggy overhang of rock, skirt the summit, and tackle the guards from behind. I wondered if it was Megan. Those who had broken cover and been picked off were made to kneel with their hands linked behind their heads.

Closer, in a field by the metal structure where I had been kept, another small group of women worked in pairs, each having to wrestle her partner to the ground. I could not tell if they were practising a martial art, or whether what they were doing was some kind of combined skill. At one point I saw Jackie enter the group and demonstrate a move. A woman stood up and volunteered to spar with her. They set their legs wide and gripped their wrists behind each other’s backs. After a brief engagement, and the vying of heels for ground space, the woman found her footing gone and I saw her body arc through the air before she was slammed onto the grass. I winced as her head rebounded off the turf.

I might have become bored with my convalescence were it not for the fascination of these activities. It was as if I had been granted access to a private training camp. There was a meticulous quality to the exercises being carried out. The effort put in was acute, and even when they were not engrossed in the action themselves the women remained vigilant and observant, squatting on their haunches in a circle around the arena. It did not take long to realise how easily they must have picked me off on the bields as I made my way up towards Carhullan, slowly and in full view.

There was constant movement in the courtyard below too. I heard the rumble of barrels being rolled on the wide uneven cobbles, and the chock-chock of wood being stacked. Sacks of feed were taken in and out of the storage sheds. At one point a pack of dogs spilled into the yard, their tails wagging stiffly. They roiled around and then were let out. Over in the paddocks, ponies necked against each other, or frisked their tails and cantered about as the high wind caught hold of them.

Jackie had not given me permission to leave the main house or walk around the farm, so I stayed put in the white stone bedroom, sleeping a little, then sitting cat-like on the wooden window seat and observing the drills and agricultural routines. I’d wrapped the blanket from the bed around myself, knotting it under the sling. My rucksack and its contents were still absent.

Once or twice I had walked quietly down the long landing to the bathroom, shyly passing door after door, afraid of running into someone else. I’d felt like a ghost moving through the quiet loft of the farmhouse, undressed and trailing a sheet; a wisp, little more than vapour. It was almost unbelievable to think of the crowded noisy terrace quarters in which I had lived only a few days earlier; where people streamed ant-like to and from work; where they queued to use the bathrooms and the oven; where they fucked and argued and cried, and the floors creaked under the weight of so many penalised bodies, and everywhere the atmosphere was of human pressure.

Towards evening Lorry knocked and came into the room. I had begun to feel edgy and discarded and I was pleased to see somebody I recognised, even though our previous encounter had involved a painful examination. In her hand was a folded yellow garment. She laid it on the bed, and told me to put it on whenever I was ready and wanted to come down. ‘Standard practice for new intakes,’ she said. ‘We’re a traditional bunch of so-and-sos really.’ In her other hand she held a black leather case, like an old-fashioned doctor’s bag. As she opened it and brought out a wrap of instruments I thought about what Jackie had told me, that Lorry had been responsible for all the safe births on the farm. Like Jackie she seemed to possess authority and confidence.

I wondered how Veronique had died, and whether Carhullan’s midwife and medic had tried and failed to save her. Perhaps there had been an accident, something too wounding to treat. The thought of it saddened me.

I wanted to ask Lorry for all the information I had not managed to get from Jackie during our brief exchange. Of the women I had met so far she had been the most amenable and kind, and I knew she had objected, at least on medical principle, to me being tossed into the dog box. I decided not to try my luck on the subject. I was not in a position to pry and I did not know how much inquiry was acceptable yet and how much would be discourteous. I had seen already that the place ran reasonably smoothly and with considerable collaboration among the women. I was still an outsider.

‘You’re looking bright,’ Lorry said. ‘Considering.’ She sat down on the unmade bed. ‘I hope you’re OK with everything. I know it must have been a blow, getting slung in the box right off like that.’ She shook her head. ‘Jackie wanted to be sure – we thought we were off the radar by now.’ She smiled at me, and the crease in her brow deepened. ‘She probably wanted to see what you were made of too. She can be a bit of a sod that way. But it is her department.’