The Carhullan Army (25 page)

We were careful not to be seen. We crossed the swollen brown water of the Eden after the electrical grid had powered down and darkness was spreading over the town. The flooding was worse around the bridge. We were miles from the estuary but sand had somehow found its way back upstream and it lay in swathes along the waterline. Lumber and tree trunks were stacked up against the buttresses, and those trees which had not been felled lay waterlogged and dying, with detritus snagged in their branches

I and the others dismounted, and we hid the ponies in the ruined river cottages, took off the sacks, and rested them on our own shoulders. Then we made our way on foot along the broken road, retracing the route I had used to get away. At the edge of town we divided into patrols and went about our business.

The settlement was the same as it had been when I left. Everything looked familiar, run-down and debilitated, still caught up in the failed mechanism of the recovery plan. Nothing seemed to have improved. The cyst-like meters hummed on the facades of buildings. Fetid rubbish was piled in open plots – electronics, prams, moulded plastics – and hundreds of vehicles lined the concrete aprons of the old supermarket. I saw a litter of feral puppies curled underneath a bus. They looked up with hungry solicitous eyes as we walked by, and growled. The lower-lying streets were under water and on the doors of the houses a red X had been dashed. We passed by the turbine factory. The gates were locked, and a heavy chain sat between their bars. There was a notice secured to the post.
Closed until further notice
.

It was disquieting to be back there, at night, under the browned sky, creeping as silently as I had done when I escaped. The echo of blood pumping hard was loud inside my head. I felt as if something in me might burst. I wanted to hammer on the doors and drag the residents from their beds, I wanted to shake them out of their stupor and have them follow us to the castle in an angry mob, tear those within it limb from limb. But I did not. I moved like a spirit, divorced from the dimension I found myself in, unable to manifest, unable to reach out and touch the solid world.

The others kept watch while I ghosted through the streets, leaving the wrappings at the doors of the occupied terrace quarters, in letterboxes, the cracks between bricks, and tied to the railings of the clinic; wherever people lived, wherever they suffered.

It was hard to know how well they would be received by the inhabitants of the combined residences; what, if anything, they would discern from a spray of ribboned foliage left at the foot of their homes. It was a strange rustic token that made little sense in the dark cobbled streets of the town, but its texture was like a warning, and its yellow bloom was somehow hopeful. There was no way to convey our true intent, no printed matter that we could distribute among the people. The gorse gave nothing away. It was simply a coded gift, a curious blossoming of colour in the wet unlit corridors.

I did not think of him often now, but when we passed through the street in which I had once been sectioned, I imagined Andrew sleeping upstairs in that room of huddled boxes, salvaged possessions, and consolidated existence. I did not know whether he would be alone or with someone else. I had been gone for a year and a half and it was doubtful that anything of mine would be left in the quarter. He was not a sentimental man. Most likely I had been reported and struck off, my remaining things examined by monitors and anything deemed useful removed. No one had come looking for me. For all I knew, I had disappeared utterly; perhaps I was even thought to be dead. Whatever my fate, Andrew no longer had a wife.

I pictured him picking up the corsage on the way to the refinery that morning, feeling the sharpness of it in his palm, and wondering about it, wondering what it meant. He would no doubt toss it back down on the step, leaving it for the other family to bring inside, or he would throw it onto one of the refuse piles at the end of the street. But he would hear that identical bundles had been found throughout the quarters. And he would realise, as many others would, that no gorse grew within the periphery of Rith, not even on the slopes of the Beacon Hill. It was a plant that flourished only in the uplands now, that had been brought in from the old Lakeland district. It was a message from without.

For two weeks we made night runs into town. We were not caught. We did not remain there long enough to witness the cuttings’ discovery, or reveal ourselves in the process of delivering them. Instead we went quickly to where the fell ponies were tethered and rode back along the mountain tracks to Carhullan. We never went to the same street twice. And we never gave any other indication of what was coming. As I worked, I knew that Jackie was not far away, making her count, timing the movements of the Authority.

The castle loomed above the town on the small hill opposite the Beacon, and within its barracks was the Authority’s headquarters, and the records of all those living within the official zones. Since the flooding of the Solway City it had become the central command post of the region. In the smaller Pennine towns there was a moderate Authority presence, enough monitors to maintain order, to oversee work details and the distribution of rations, but here lay the region’s main chamber of power. To strike it would be to sunder the chassis that held everything together. Jackie’s plan was not to hit and run, or to create havoc. She was planning a coup. We were going to hold Rith for as long as possible. Once word got out, once more ammunition had been taken, vehicles and supplies, then the other settlements would fall, she said. There would be mass uprising, a groundswell. The tide would turn against those who had abused their power for the last ten years. We would be the first place to declare independence, but others would follow. It was not about defending Carhullan any more; she was now fighting for the whole of the Northern territory.

As I walked through my hometown, remapping it in the darkness, my blood would slow and I would think about her vision and her courage. I would think of her standing in silhouette by the kitchen fireplace. We were on the cusp of a great moment in history, she had said, turning from the flames to face us. ‘We’ve become used to change always happening elsewhere, haven’t we? We’ve become used to waiting, hoping to be saved, hoping those in charge will reform and reform us. It’s the sickness of our breed. And it has become our national weakness. Sisters, no one is going to help us. There is only us. So why not here? Why not now?’ She had held a fist at her side, and white spittle had gathered on her lip. ‘Remember this as you go down there,’ she had urged us. ‘Revolutions always begin in mountain regions. It’s the fate of such places. Look around you. Look where you are. These are the disputed lands. They have never been settled. And those of us who live in them have never surrendered to anyone’s control. Nor will we ever.’

At night the heavy doors of the castle’s entrance were closed, opening only to let blue cruisers crawl in and out. Near the fortified walls, on the other side of the road, was Rith’s railway station. Once a week freight arrived, brought up from the ports to the South; shipments of food and medical supplies. The clinic lay half a mile away, in the shell of Rith’s elegant old hospital. And at the head of the town were the vast grey cylinders of the Uncon oil refinery. Everything was surveyed and marked out. Nothing would be left to chance.

On the last night of reconnaissance I stood in the streets and the rain hissed down around me. Litter blew along the gutters, empty containers, foils, and the little broken ampoules with silvery deposits inside. Faith cards lay rotting on the side of the road and rats scuttered along the filthy viaducts. I saw a thin dog slinking past the end of the terrace with a ragged grey scrap in its mouth. From inside a building I could hear the cries of a woman, and they went on and on, as if she could not stop, as if she were complicit in her own despair.

I had no love for the place. There was no residue of affection for the town in which I had been raised, and where I had seen out the country’s swift demise. I did not feel bad for its fate. I was not sorry for what would be my part in it. Everything had fallen too far. The people were oppressed, just as they had been hundreds of years before; they were the slaves of Megan’s imagining. The government had long ago failed them, and it would go on failing them. It was a place of desperation and despotism. Like the rest of the country, Rith was already a scene of ruin; nothing worse could have befallen it than its current state.

Once I had barely believed what I was living through. Now I believed deeply that the wrongs committed were tantamount, that the lives of the people within were worth saving and taking, that we had a duty to liberate society, to recreate it.

*

I was not among those who escorted the non-combatants off the farm. The original unit was issued that task. Over the course of two weeks that March small groups climbed into the back of the Land Rover and were taken down the fell, then on over to the Pennine towns. Jackie’s network was slim, but she seemed to trust those she had contact with inside the zones. Though they would not fight, the women had agreed to spread word of what she was doing, and attempt to raise local support for any action that might occur there later, after the operation in Rith.

The separation was more painful than I had thought it would be. Though the unit had become hardened in its conviction, and a line had been drawn through the community, there were friendships over a decade old being severed as the other women left. Watching them embrace and draw apart I wondered briefly if what we were doing was the right course after all; whether it would have been better for us all to remain in Carhullan and pray that we would be left alone, just as some of them had wanted. It felt as if we were sending them towards absolute danger, towards the terrible internment camps of the last century, though I knew it was us who would face the worst of it.

Helen held Stella in her arms. She cried and struggled and tried to get down. Her mother attempted to comfort her, telling her they were only going for a ride, but the rumble of the Land Rover’s engine had scared her, and she twisted about, looking at the vehicle with fear, then hiding her face away from it. One by one the women came forward and kissed the wet bloom of her cheek, and she knew something was wrong, and the pitch of her wailing increased. She was the youngest of them, the last daughter of Carhullan, and she was being given up for adoption, given over to a world which would not love her as she had been loved here. The women knew it, and some of them turned away, unable to stand witness to the casting out of an infant. Helen cradled her head tenderly as she climbed into the back seat. The door was shut, and the child’s cries were muffled.

On the second evacuation I said goodbye to Shruti. She stood holding a small bag, looking in my direction, then she came to me, held me to her, and whispered in my ear. She spoke in her first language and I did not understand the words. I felt her warm hands on my scalp, supporting the flesh and bone above my neck, and it felt as if she were holding the full weight of me. I felt heavier than I ever had, full of lead and brass chattel, like the pouches we had carried on the long drag. I wanted to say something to her, but could not. I put my arms round her waist and carefully slipped the necklace back into her pocket. I could not keep it. We had not been intimate for long but she leant up and brushed my mouth softly with her own. I knew I would not see her again. Whatever the success of our campaign, it would not be of sufficient degree to give me the chance to be with her, even if we had desired it.

She climbed into the Land Rover with the others and Jackie took the driver’s seat, started it up, and pulled away. I watched the vehicle tracking over the steep ground, its tyres biting in to the earth as it hauled across the bields. And then she was gone.

At the side of the remaining group, Chloe had her arms crossed tightly over her chest. She was crying. Her forehead was buckled and her cheeks sucked in and out. I knew she was upset about more than the departure of some of the colony. She had never been convinced by Jackie’s interpretation of the events to come, nor her strategy, thinking her involved in a deception or conspiracy of some kind. She had never approved of the transformation of Carhullan, or the strong-arm tactics being employed. She felt bullied, and at Jackie’s mercy. The panic showed in her. She was emaciated, her yellow hair was greying, and her once-brown skin looked pale. Even her eyes had been leached of their original hazel. Now they had the trapped, sallow glitter of citrines.

Since the gorse cutting she had been skittish and furtive, whispering with her husband whenever they were together and looking as if she might break down. Every day she walked out on the fell to look for monitors, and every day she came back and told whichever of us she came across first that there was no sigh of invaders. I was sorry for what had become of her. She was full of fear and paranoia. It made me uncomfortable to see her shouting at Jackie and being pulled back by Martyn, or pleading with the women to listen to her, making a fool of herself. Mostly people avoided her.

She saw me looking her way. I quickly dropped my eyes so as not to set her off, and tried to walk past, but it was enough of a connection for her to try again. She lunged and caught hold of my wrist as I passed by. ‘Please, Sister, please listen to me,’ she whispered. ‘She’s using you.’ Her breath smelled sour, as if she had not eaten anything that day. Her hand was shaking but her grip was tight. ‘You’ve been groomed by her,’ she said, ‘ever since you got here. Can’t you see it? She’s lying about everything. What you’re doing isn’t right. You’re going to get killed. All of you. And she doesn’t care. She’s so bloody-minded. Please!’

She looked wildly about her at the women in the courtyard and raised her voice. ‘Why won’t any of you believe me?’ I heard somebody close by snort and then murmur under her breath, ‘Maybe because you’re such a damn hysteric, you stupid bitch.’

I unfastened Chloe’s grip and took her hand away. I couldn’t bear to have her close to me when she behaved like this, and I could feel anger rising in me, the urge to lash out. I pushed her back and walked across the courtyard towards the house. ‘You’re a fool, Sister,’ she shrieked after me. ‘She’s got into your head! She’s pulling your strings. And you don’t even know it, do you?’