The Carhullan Army Page 9

  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.’

  Lorry had on the same long skirt that I had seen her wearing previously, and a woollen cardigan that looked baggy, stretched out of shape at the cuffs and elbows. I shrugged as best I could in the gauze sling. ‘Someone shows up armed and with a picture of me, I likely would have done it too. She thought I was an assassin or someone sent by the Authority, right? And I was supposed to confess in there? I would have confessed to it if I’d thought it was the way to get out.’ Lorry chuckled and gestured for me to sit on the bed next to her. ‘You would have, if it had been the truth.’

  She ran another quick check of my shoulder and then lifted the dressing on my hand. I saw a row of neat black stitches in the flesh. ‘No tetanus shots here, I’m afraid,’ she said, ‘but I irrigated, so you should be OK. Just keep an eye out that it doesn’t start to go green.’ I nodded. ‘There are no shots down there either any more,’ I replied, ‘At least, not for free.’ She glanced up at me and I noticed the caramels and greens that made up the strange marbling of her irises. There was more grey spun into her hair than I had seen in the dusk outside. ‘No, I know that,’ she said. ‘But they do have the means to inoculate against some things, don’t they? The utter bastards.’ Her tone was quietly aggrieved, but she was still smiling kindly, tacitly, and I could see the criticism was not directed at me. It was bitter sympathy that she was expressing.

  My eyes stung and began to fill with tears again. I felt like hugging her, or putting my face in her lap and crying myself quietly back to sleep. Exhaustion had left me too sensitive, too emotional. I bit my lip, caught hold of myself. She took a glass jar out of the case, unscrewed it and gently thumbed a waxy salve over the cut. It smelled of honey and witch hazel and stung a little. ‘Yes. We’re up to speed on the Authority’s anti-breeding campaign. But, you know, it might be good if you talked about it to the other women during one of our meetings. If you feel you want to. We’ve reached a bit of an impasse on the subject.’ She taped a new patch of lint over my palm. ‘So, now then. What do you want me to do about it?’

  I had been undressed, washed and administered to, presumably by Lorry herself. It was obvious that she knew my situation, as Jackie did, and I was glad of it. Sitting there with her rough hands on my arm I felt understood. On the face of it Jackie had seemed convivial, but there was something calculated about her manner, a note of restraint perhaps, that went with her position. The woman tending to me now had a different role. She was a healer. I realised that in her years at the farm Lorry must have dealt with every kind of female complaint, every kind of harm to the body. I did not have to explain myself to her or inch in to a difficult topic. I did not have to try to justify my discomfort, as I had to Andrew.

  Since the regulator had been fitted I’d felt a sense of minor but constant embarrassment about myself, debilitation almost, as if the thing were an ugly birthmark. I knew others around me were fitted too, and on the surface they seemed unchanged and able to accommodate the intrusion. Now, in Lorry’s company, the device felt exactly as it was: an alien implant, an invader in my body, something that had been rejected all but physically. It was like a spelk under the skin; it had stopped pricking, but I had not for one day forgotten it. And I was not wrong to hate it.

  ‘I want it gone,’ I told her. ‘Really, I don’t care how much it hurts. Just get it out.’ I rubbed my arm above the blanket. There was so much more to say. I wanted to talk to her, wanted to tell her how bad it really was, all that had been done to me. I managed a short outburst. ‘There are fourteen-year-olds with these things in, you know. And grandmothers. What right have they got to violate them?’

  Lorry sighed and clapped her hands on her thighs, squeezing the meat of them with her fingers. ‘Yes, I know. Listen, don’t worry. It’ll be fine. I can’t promise you a wonderful time while I’m down there, but I think you’ll cope.’

  As she stood I noticed a kink in the way she raised herself, a favouring of one hip. I had guessed her to be in her fifties perhaps, but now I was not sure that she wasn’t older. ‘I’ll go and get ready,’ she said. ‘We might as well get on with it and get it over. You just sit tight.’ She paused at the end of the bed, then took hold of the folded yellow cloth and shook it out. It was one of the tunics I had seen the Carhullan stallholders wearing all those years ago. ‘Ha! Just like old times!’ she said. ‘It’s going to be good to see someone wearing this again. You know what, I’m looking forward to it. What we need is some of the old passion back.’

  *

  It was not until the next day that I finally made it downstairs, into the massive kitchen of Carhullan. I was sore from what Lorry had done to release the hook and the wire, still bleeding and cramping a little. Up in the room she had given me a draught of something sweet and syrupy which made me drowsy and thick headed, apologising when she handed it to me for the homespun nature of the sedative and explaining the difficult choices necessary when dispensing their meagre store of painkillers and anaesthetics. She apologised again, and said she hoped I wouldn’t suffer too much. Last year she’d had to remove a finger on one woman’s hand after an accident at the oat mill – it was mostly gone anyway, crushed to hell – and even that call had been a tough one. In the end the woman had gone without. They used the old wooden-spoon method a lot. Teeth got pulled that way too, she said. But that was the nature of things at Carhullan. Supplies were limited.

  Then Lorry had set to work. She’d been quick and determined about me, forcing my knees apart when I tensed and resisted, and she’d given me a soft rag to put in my underwear to absorb the flow afterwards. But still I felt stretched and scoured. I had tried to sleep for the rest of the day. She’d left another draught beside me on the dresser and sometime during the night I’d woken with a deep griping in my belly and I’d taken it and it had knocked me back out. In the morning there had been dark brown blood on the sheets. I’d bundled them up and gone down to the bathroom to clean myself, and I’d put the stained cottons in the old copper bath to soak. In the mirror opposite the tub I had looked deathly pale. It was odd to see my reflection after days of not looking. I almost did not recognise myself.

  Towards midday Lorry had checked me out again, given me new presses. ‘You’ll do, but take things easy, OK?’ she said. ‘Let yourself heal. And I don’t just mean physically.’ I had tried to get her to stay on a while and talk to me, but she’d excused herself, saying she was really busy; a couple of the ponies needed looking over, and she had a sow to dispatch. She was also the farm’s vet and butcher.

  I did not want to remain confined much longer upstairs. I had begun to feel like a bird that had flown accidentally into the rafters through an open window, then lost its bearings and been unable to leave. Though I half expected her, Jackie did not come to see me again, and there were no more initiations or welcomes, no more meals brought to me on trays, just the muffled sounds of people below and outside getting on with things, signalling my exclusion. The second herbal analgesic had worn off, leaving me thirsty and quaking, and I was aware of how empty my stomach was again. I knew the decision to leave the room was now mine alone. Hunger rather than courage would drive me out. It was late afternoon when I finally found the desperation to move. By then the spasms in my abdomen had lessened and I felt able to face all those who must know about my prese
nce but had yet to see me in the flesh.

  The woollen tunic seemed strange when I slipped it on, like a rough borrowed shirt, an item taken temporarily from a friend until wet or damaged clothing might be returned. In its weave was a mustiness, and the lingering scent of someone else – I did not know who – perhaps the last person to have worn it, whenever that was. But it was comforting to have been given it, and as I fastened its ties in a knot at my back I began to feel less solitary, less alien. I knew this was the first official step towards inclusion.

  I came nervously down the stone stairs, barefoot and careful on the cold steps. There was a door at the bottom of the hallway and a hum of activity in the room beyond it. I opened it to find upwards of thirty women sitting on benches at a long wooden table, taking a small meal of dark brown meat and kale.

  They turned when they saw me and stopped eating, and for a long minute I endured their full scrutiny, uncivil and raw. I scanned the rows for a face that I could recognise – Megan, Lorry or even Jackie – but there was no one I could quietly implore to rise and seat me, introduce me, or serve as my guide in this unfamiliar realm.

  Facing me were women of all ages, some with grey in their hair, some with long braids, and others with eccentrically cropped styles. They were mostly dressed as the women I’d met on the moors had been, practically, with thrift and a certain bespoke artistry. Some had overalls that seemed extreme and invented, tribal almost. Others had panels and shapes shaved into their heads. They wore straps of leather around their wrists and upper arms, and stone pendants: their smocks and shirts were cut down, resewn, and there was a small girl among them with her face painted blue, and blue stains on her jumper. No one else had on a yellow tunic. The bright item I was wearing suddenly seemed more like a convict’s uniform than it did my banner of belonging. I tried to smile and greet them but my mouth was paralysed. All I could do was remain still, silently waiting for someone to tell me what to do.