The First Book of Calamity Leek (16 page)

‘Oh, Calamity, I can read that face of yours like a book.'

‘You can?' I whispered.

‘It's your Mother, isn't it? You would like to know the colour of your Mother's eyes. Well, don't look so gobsmacked, niece. It's a predictable question. One that I, sadly, never had answered as a child.' Aunty opened her plastic pot and threw some more pills in her mouth. She swallowed some medicine from the bottle and then she threw out the tea from the cups, and put the cake in its tin inside the hamper. She shook crumbs off the plates onto Truly's mound. ‘Don't want the poor dear starving down there, do we?'

I stared at Aunty locking up her hamper. With everything she already knew about us, I sometimes wondered why she ever needed any more eyes.

Aunty winked, ‘And we certainly don't want any more escaping Houdinis, do we? So you keep those eyes peeled, and those ears flapping, Calamity, and we have ourselves a deal. In the meantime, it's back to the coalface for you and your shit buckets. Off you pop now, and get working off that stodge.'

Annie had filled two sacks with tools. She was watching me close. ‘You look tired, Clam. You should go back to the dorm and get some sleep.'

‘I am tired, Annie, yes, happen I am.' My voice wobbled. ‘But I came to find you, and tell you the knowledge you missed from the new Appendix page I read out tonight. That's all. That's why I'm here.'

She smiled. ‘Come, sit down with me, Clam.' And them words curled round me sweet as heating honey. She shook out a sack against the bins next to hers, and patted it. ‘I'm sorry I missed your reading. I bet it was a good one.'

I blew my nose and sat down. ‘It was.' The bin was cold against my back. ‘It was a brand-new
L
. It was about loss, Annie. The Goddess Daughter feeling sorry for our loss of Truly.'

Annie squeezed me close. ‘That's nice.'

‘Yes it is. And the Goddess Daughter said she was sorry Truly got so nosy, because look where it leads to – page
N
– nothing but nonsense.' I blew my nose again. ‘You know, I didn't choose to be chosen to know all the Appendix.'

‘I know.'

‘No, I didn't. It ain't my fault I was chosen. And it ain't easy, knowing it all and needing to tell your sisters right from wrong. You try it. It ain't easy being always on your guard for Him, and then missing Him when He came and sneaked nosiness into Truly's head. Which I did, Annie, I missed Him. And now she's off burning in Bowels. And there ain't nothing nice in knowing you missed Him coming.'

It is a bit of an unpleasant truth, but I was near drowning us both in snot tears. ‘I ain't stupid, Annie. I can see you
packing tools and drawing bricks, and I can see your brow getting all hot and knotted, and I can hear you talking about there being no injuns out there. Which ain't ever been proven, has it? And all your why and how and what-ing talk means only one thing. All this nosiness in you means only one thing. He's coming for you, Annie, the signs are clear.'

Annie rocked us close. ‘Hush now, Clam. I'm safe, I promise.'

But I shook myself off, and my eyes and nose gushed free. ‘You won't even tell me why you're here. How can I help you if you won't tell me?'

‘I'm just sorting out tools for winter is all. I was thinking of Truly and I couldn't sleep.'

‘That's all you're doing?'

‘That's all.'

Well, I cried a bit more and then I blew my nose on a sack end. ‘That's good, Annie. That's good.'

Annie smiled and ripped me another scrap of sack. ‘Truly always said a good cry was worth ten pig suppers.'

I was about to say, ‘Well, I don't know about that,' when something crashed in the far end of the barn and smashed my thoughts to pieces.

I jumped up. ‘What was that?'

Annie shrugged. ‘That cat. Or the bats maybe.'

‘Bats, Annie!'

The noise echoed away. ‘We are stuck in the Devil's own night-time, and something clangs louder than a bucket on concrete, and you shrug and say on bats! I never thought you for being a Liphook fool, but well, Annie. Well.'

I pointed my torch all about the dark barn. I listened
hard. Dead silence now. The sort of silence that comes from sucked-in breath. Shapes were moving in the dark of the supply shelves – bodies, flashing through the shadows. Metal was flashing. I rubbed my eyes and thought the only thing I could. Injuns. Got sneaky through the Wall to kill us off in our sleep. Playing dead with Truly to spring a surprise on us. I looked at Annie to say this terrible news to her, but she had turned away from me. And then a voice came out of the dark.

‘Well, hello there, sister Sneak. Enjoy Aunty's chocolate cake did we, eh?'

IT WASN'T AN
injun, but Nancy, course, who came stepping out of the darkness, a butching blade in her hand. Dorothy came after, then Mary, Sandra and even sickly Eliza, switching on their torches. Every one of my elder sisters, wrapped in rope and carrying tools. And standing tall behind them, with not one lump of potatoness showing on her face, was our simplebrained eldest sister of all, Maria Liphook. Who was holding an axe.

Well.

Well, I looked from Maria along each of my sisters' faces to Annie, and what words I had died in me. Annie stared at her toes. I looked back to Maria, stood there so bright-eyed and drool-free, I wasn't sure whether the Goddess Daughter hadn't just thrown all the pieces of her face up in the air so they landed shifted into someone else.

I shook my head and shook it again. And my leg bones turned to jellymeat, so as I had to reach behind me to the petal bin and slide down. I whispered the only thing left rattling my head, ‘Maria, you came out without me?'

And for half the start of a second, it really seemed like this Maria-but-not-Maria's lips were shaping to answer me, it really did. But then her eyes shifted onto Annie and stayed there.

Annie shuffled along and squeezed my shoulder. ‘Sorry, Clam,' she whispered. ‘We didn't tell you because—'

‘Because someone would go and have a sneaky cup of tea with Aunty,' Nancy said. ‘Or maybe a sneaky slice of cake. Isn't that right, eh, sister Leek?'

‘Golly, is she all right?' Mary Bootle's voice said somewhere. ‘She's turned awful grey.'

Happen Mary was talking about me. Happen she wasn't. But I weren't bothered because I wasn't looking at her. I was looking at a little woodlouse crawling along my sack edge and I was listening to a hissing noise. Sounded like a kettle was boiling itself up somewhere. Which was funny stuff.

‘We should put her head between her knees. Come on, Clam, hush up.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Did she just say something?'

I tried hard to speak without that kettle drowning me up. ‘What do you mean about the tea?'

‘Golly, she really is making ever such a funny noise.'

I watched that woodlouse come crawling up. I don't think it was doing the hissing. It was wearing Aunty's face. ‘Keep 'em flapping,' it said. ‘Keep 'em flapping.' It winked and went crawling on past.

Dorothy's eyes came close to mine. Hands pressed on my shoulders. ‘Clam, listen to me. You need to calm down. Try breathing into this sack.'

Where was Nancy?

‘WHERE IS NANCY?' Whatever else she did, Nancy Nunhead told the truth.

A voice was shouting, ‘What do you mean about the tea, Nancy Nunhead? Tell me what you mean about the sneaky tea, Nancy Nunhead!'

All sudden, Nancy's voice was heating up my left ear. ‘Alrighty, Clam, I will. Truly was getting better. And you went for tea with Aunty. And then that afternoon – well, we all know what happened to Truly that afternoon.'

My belly flipped. Brown sick shot out of my mouth onto my smock.

And no one said nothing.

After a bit, I heard myself moan, ‘I loved Truly Polperro.' I said Nancy's mouth was crawling with filthy lies and I loved Truly Polperro. ‘I loved Truly.'

And happen my moans turned to howls, because after a bit Annie said, ‘Hush up, Clam, we know you loved Truly.'

‘I can't keep saying sorry for Jean Valjean forever, Nancy, I really can't. Like Aunty didn't already know he was missing. Like Aunty hadn't said, “Kill off all swinefever piglets at once, before they threaten the whole herd and the sickness mutates to humans, wrecking all your Mother's plans for War.” Like I was to know Aunty would make you do his slaughter to teach you a lesson for hiding him. Like I was to know that.'

Nancy spat on the sorry little woodlouse. ‘Nice piece of cake was it?'

‘Can I help it if Aunty gives me cake sometimes?'

No one said nothing.

‘It was a piece of cake, Nancy, that's all it was. And it tasted horrible. Anyway who was spying on me?'

No one said nothing.

‘That ain't nice. That ain't sisterly, spying ain't.'

‘You should know,' Nancy said.

‘Am I the only one here who cares to try and keep Annie out of Bowels?'

Nancy spat on the floor. ‘Like you kept Truly out, eh?'

No one spoke, and Nancy's words lay there between us like corpse meat, to swell and burst with flies.

I wailed that it wasn't fair, it was hyperthermia, it wasn't my tea. This was just Nancy speaking nastiness because of that piglet. Everyone knew it was hyperthermia, didn't they, Annie? Overheating – Aunty said so. And I loved Truly, and Annie knows that, don't you, Annie?

And Annie said nothing. Annie said nothing at all.

After a bit Dorothy blinked and said, ‘Well, never mind all that now. We've got to hurry if we're going to get you through it tonight.'

‘Get who through what?' I said.

Nancy said, ‘But what are we going to do about her, eh?'

So Annie said, ‘I expect Clam would like to come with us.'

‘Where?' I said, sniffing up snot and wishing for a voice to come out and answer mine, just this once. ‘Come where?'

And Annie answered me then, she did. ‘Why, to the Wall, of course.'

Outside the barn, one brave cloud had flung itself at the Demonmoon. Next door, the stone walls of Nursery Cottage were turned to shadows, the second wind toddlers and third-wind Baby Sainsbury's safe asleep inside, like I
wished I was. I pulled my headscarf low and wrapped my fur tight. Heaven's lights sparked icy through the holes in the drainage lid. So many up there that not even quick-fingered Truly Polperro could have pinch-measured them all. It was a feet-freezing night.

Annie shut the barn door and set off down the path. ‘Everyone stay close, and go tiptoes on the gravel,' she whispered. ‘Someone keep a watch on Maria at the back.'

And my sisters crept off after her, their torches making a yellow caterpillar, their sacks chinking with their steps, their breath puffing out in ice clouds. I watched them head west for the path to the turnips, not one of them stopping to say, ‘Where's Calamity Leek? Come on, sister, catch us up!' No, I watched them go, and I thought to turn back for the yard where some younger body – Millie Gatwick, say – would be welcoming of a cuddle. Then I thought about Annie. I thought how easy she had said to me she weren't doing nothing with them tools. And now she was heading for the Wall. My heart stopped dead a second. Weren't nothing for it, I set off quick after them.

Deep into the plum orchard, I caught up with her and grabbed her fur.

‘You never told me, Annie. I asked you what the tools were for, and you never said the truth.'

A brown owl leaped off a high branch and glided over us.

‘And that ain't sisterly,' I said, my voice shrinking off, so it near got lost in the night. ‘Annie, it ain't.'

But Annie just shone her torch in front and kept on stepping.

We came to the fattest plum tree. Annie swung her torch down on Truly's mound. Dew bubbles shone on
Truly's pebbled name. Annie swung her torch over the Boule heads and strawdolls, and the millipedes and dung beetles that were chewing over the soil, and she walked on.

I caught her again in the last of the plums, tugging on her smock to slow her steps. ‘I didn't send Truly to Bowels when I had my tea with Aunty, you know that, Annie. I would have done anything to keep her safe. You know that, don't you?'

Annie didn't look at me, but she did put out her hand for mine. ‘Step your feet in my torch puddle, Clam, you'll find it easier that way.'

‘Only, can you tell Nancy, please? Only, she won't listen to me because of that sick piglet. Which I only told Aunty about for all our safety. And you should know I would do anything to keep you safe, Annie, I really would.'

Annie lifted a low branch and ducked out of the orchard. Under His deceiving moonlight, Sting Alley was shaped into soft grey feathers. ‘Run through here fast as you can, Clam. Stay close in my steps.'

We didn't stop running until I felt my toes slide into bog. Out here the black night had melted into the ground, so there weren't no way of telling sky lid from soil. There weren't a sound but that of squelching sisters, clinking tools and my own panted breath.

‘You know, Annie, we could still turn back,' I said. ‘They'd all listen to you. Happen this midnight bog-stomping has been fun, but it's been quite fun enough.'

Annie's eyes didn't shift off following her torch puddle.

‘Thing is, Truly was nosy and look what happened to her. I know you loved her, but it doesn't mean you have to end that way too. And if there ain't any injuns out
there, but something worse – well then, it will lead to more than nonsense for you, won't it?' I tried to turn my voice nice and creamy. ‘I won't tell no one if you decide to turn round. If you hurt your toe all sudden, or get a bellyache, say.'

Annie stopped. ‘But will it lead to nonsense?' She looked round to check on our sisters. I counted the breath clouds puffing out in the dark. Thankful, no one looked to have been sucked down to Bowels yet.