The First Book of Calamity Leek

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Authors: Paula Lichtarowicz

BOOK: The First Book of Calamity Leek
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Contents

About the Book

About the Author

Title Page

Acknowledgements

Dedication

The Starting of Things

Injuns

Jane Jones

Our Dorm

C for Creation

Making a Body Beautiful

Spitting Image Maria

Heat

No Worms

Happy Birthday, Emily

Talking Words

The Next Day

The Day After That

The Day After the Day After That

A Pig in a Barrow

Emily

X-Ray

Showreel

Gretel's Babies

How are Rat Babies Made?

Role Play

The Meaning of Elizabeth Jones

Purpose

The Wall

The Demonmale

Pigs

Japan

Bath

Sam

Birmingham

Calamity Jane

A Demonmale Visitor

The Good Fight

Emily

Breakthrough

The Devil-in-Annie

Fished out too Soon

A Letter

Outside

Betws

Disappointment

Emilys

Mother's Eyes

Bowels

Leaving

After Everything

Going Home

Copyright

About the Book

This is the place where you expect to be told about the novel. Who the characters are, where it's set, what happens – that kind of thing. And, whatever it says you'll probably believe because, well, why would someone lie?

People lie for all kinds of reasons. Some lies become so vast and so complicated and so tenacious that they become the truth. And if they're all you've ever known, why would you question them?

Let's assume a group of girls, Sisters, are living in Wales. They are busy preparing themselves for Mother's War against the demonmales. One night Truly Polperro looks over The Wall of Safekeeping. She can't see any Injuns and she wants to know why. Because there are always Injuns lurking outside the Wall, aren't there? Truly's Sister, Calamity Leek knows that ‘nosiness doesn't lead to nothing but nonsense.' She knows that they have ‘the Appendix for all the answers we need in life'. But doubt is contagious. And frightening.

You'll find
THE FIRST BOOK OF CALAMITY LEEK
inventive, disturbing and wild. You'll feel sorry for its damaged narrator and be a little scared of her. You'll understand that there are two kinds of people – those who tell stories and those that believe them.

But don't take our word for it.

About the Book

Before becoming a writer, Paula Lichtarowicz worked in the City and in television production. She is studying Psychology and lives in London under the tyrannous rule of a young border collie called Mrs Pankhurst.

The First Book of Calamity Leek
Paula Lichtarowicz

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am hugely grateful to my friends for the support they have given me over the years. Special thanks to Anna, Queen of Blips, and Denise and Richard for the Borat swim wear. Thank you Gabrielle for the Betty's excursions, Helen for the San Marco's nights, Kitty and Neil for keeping me topped up with white wine. Thank you Tara and Andy for sharing your home with me, Nicola for your honest critiques, and Malcolm for your proof reading. Marek, Emma and Michelle – I'm proud of all of us. And thank you Simon for shipping forecasts and round houses, and for making me smile.

Thank you, Clare for your wisdom in matters editorial and practical. Thanks also to Gillie and Cassie at Aitken Alexander for your enthusiasm and support, and Emma and the team at Hutchinson for your hard work in making it happen. And a big fat thank you to Jocasta, who believed in this book, improved it, and made the whole process a heap of fun.

For my parents, and for Lydia

THE STARTING OF THINGS

IT WAS PLAIN-COOKED
perfect, the night Truly did it. There was a good stack of cloud cover above the Wall, and the first apples of autumn for supper. The Pontefracts were off in Nursery Cottage like usual, and we thirteen other sisters were cleansed and moisturised and shut up safe, with only seams to finish on cushions. I don't even remember much bothering from the pigs next door.

The light bulb went off like usual. The High Hut went dead above us. And along the row, thirteen bodies nestled down for beauty sleep. Safe as corpses, just like usual. Until we were woken in the night by a scream. Which was most unusual.

It went something like this –

‘AAAAAAAAAAEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII.'

‘Oh?' A body sat up along from me, puffing out steam in the dark. Annie St Albans, that was, scratching her bushy head. ‘Did I just hear something?'

But before I could answer, a crash landed far off.

‘Truly?' Annie flashed green eyes up and down our row. ‘Truly Polperro?'

I sat up and patted about next to me. ‘There ain't nothing between us, Annie.'

‘Oh, Truly,' Annie said.

‘Her fur's gone,' I said.

‘Oh, Truly, you didn't, did you?' Annie said.

And Annie was answered by a far-off moan, ‘UUUUUUUUUUUUUUU.'

Annie's green eyes turned black. And my own heart flipped over.

‘I'm coming,' Annie said. ‘Oh, Truly, I'm coming.'

And while the rest of us were still shaking yawns from our throats, Annie was jumping up and buttoning up.

‘No, Annie,' I said, low and warning. ‘Don't, Annie.'

She ran down the row and pulled a torch from the trunk. She snatched her headscarf from her hook, and went yanking at the door.

‘Better not, Annie.' I got up quick. ‘Out of Bounds at night and all.'

But Annie didn't hear me, being busy staring into the night. ‘Oh, Truly, did you really do it?' Annie was shaking like a bag full of lice. ‘Please say you didn't.'

And away, long and lonely as a sad cow's fart, it came again – ‘UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU.'

And Annie ran off into the yard.

Well.

Well, keeping safe under the eaves, I watched her go, chasing her torch puddle and leaping her feet over sleeping hens. Racing through the gate and into the Glamis Castles, without even checking the sky lid for safety once.

Oh Annie.

I looked quick about. The Garden was blanketed black, thank goodness, all over the yard and the roses, right up to our Wall of Safekeeping. The High Hut sat snug and protecting as a shell on a snail on top of us, and thankful, there weren't a bark to be heard. But when I checked the night above the Wall, well, my heart stopped jumping and all my breath died in me too. Because it was then I saw it – swollen and stinking and gobbling holes in the clouds – a full-grown Demonmoon.

I spun back inside. Except before I could slam the door and keep us rest in safe, every one of my ten sisters was racing down the row.

‘Stop, sisters!' I said.

My sisters were buttoning furs and flinging on headscarves.

‘This is foolsome, and deadly dangerous, sisters!' I said.

‘Come back to bed, sisters,' I said.

But, weren't no matter what I said, my sisters went turning on torches and bumping past me to go flapping their feet after Annie.

Well.

Well, I had to have a quick spit then. Nothing left in our dorm but empty straw.

Empty straw and a
PAM PAM PAM
ing noise starting up.

PAM PAM PAM
– which weren't none other than our lunatic sister, Maria Liphook, banging her head in her Hole below us, after joining the commotion.

Which was all I needed now, it really was.

PAM PAM PAM
went Maria, so the pigs thought to start up next door, bashing their snouts about like they were keeping time – and wanting the High Hut waking too.

So, there really wasn't nothing for it now – I knotted my headscarf, and poked my head out low and careful into the yard. Past the gate, the rose crop acre spread peaceful and pale as a mighty cloud, and still nothing to be heard shifting in the High Hut. So then I did it, I did. I took out a torch and I raced round for the Hole door. And far off in the sleeping roses, somewhere beneath that stinking Demonmoon, Truly let out her moan.

‘Come on, Maria,' I whispered, sliding back the bolts and cracking open the best smile I could find. ‘Quiet as you can now. Hope your belly's set steady for what we're going to see.'

We ran east, me and Maria, down the path between the rose rows, me gripping her big potato hand, Maria whirling her big potato feet. Our heads tucked in, our breath puffing ice clouds, the soil slipping cool and wormy beneath our running heels.

Out of the Glamis Castles and into the Silver Anniversaries we ran, the blooms shut up tight and white as shrouded mice, oozing out their perfect perfume against his Demon stink up there. Halfway along, I stopped and turned up an ear for sisterly commotion. But there was nothing to hear but that sorry UUUing.

Squeezing elbows between protecting thorns, we kept on down the rows, hunting Truly. Truly, who had been so busy at supper, pinch-measuring the holes in the sky lid and giggling into Annie's ear, that her soup turned cold. Truly and Annie, who wouldn't do nothing but giggle, ‘Tell you later,' when I went and asked them why.

Out of the Silver Anniversaries, into the nosy Icebergs, the roseheads waking to nod and nudge behind us. I
popped up for a breath and a look. Eleven yellow lights were grubbing about beneath the Eastern Wall. ‘They're only in the blessed Boules, Maria!'

We raced east into the Boules de Neige. And there, in the plumpest and palest, most Heaven-scented crops in all the Garden, in the black shadow of our Wall of Safekeeping, we found a circle of gorming faces, a fallen ladder, and flung on a bush like slapdash laundry – our sister, Truly Polperro.

‘Oh Truly,' I said, and I dropped my hold on Maria and shoved in to get a proper look. Truly wasn't wearing her headscarf, nor her fur. Her dangled arms were milkskin in the torchlight. Her throat was pale as the sorry petals she'd crushed and killed. And her face was flopped back in broke-up thorns. Yes, Truly's face was exposed bare bone white beneath that Demonmoon.

Bare bone sick, that's how I felt at that.

‘Mind out,' Annie said, shoving me back, and throwing her own fur over Truly.

‘Oh, Annie,' I whispered, ‘she went and did it, didn't she?' And words came tumbling out of me all unstoppable, like they do sometimes, ‘She went up that ladder bare-faced and unprotected, didn't she? Oh, Annie, look at her face. She wasn't – she didn't – oh, Annie – what if she—'

But Annie wasn't saying nothing for shaking. And none of my other sisters were saying nothing. And Truly wasn't saying nothing either. Oh no. Dangled on that sorry bleeding bush, Truly wasn't bothered with nothing but moaning. ‘UUU,' she moaned. ‘UUU.'

And I am sorry to say it, but a punch landed on my ear then.

It was my sister, Nancy Nunhead, doing that. And you
might as well know it here, Nancy was not the most well-mannered sister we ever had. Most probably on account of being too close a friend of pigs.

‘Devil's pubes,' Nancy said, her pig eyes shrunk to pus spots in the torchlight. ‘Like that's a clever idea.' She pointed her torch where a shadow lump of Maria Liphook was off, bouncing potatoey through the Boule rows, crashing into perfect roseheads, and howling all senseless at their protecting thorns. ‘Like bringing the lunatic was about the cleverest idea there is.'

‘Shut up, Nancy,' I said, and I thought about a spit at her. But we already had a sackful of trouble to shift tonight, and we didn't need no more. ‘Stay close, Maria,' I called out. ‘Stay close.'

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