The First Book of Calamity Leek (28 page)

I SIGHED LONG
and hard and shook my head. ‘Well, thank you very much for that, sister.'

Annie stared at the Glamis Castles. ‘Where do you think she's taking them?'

‘To be safe in the dorm, most likely. Weren't it lucky Mother didn't see what Dorothy did to Emily's toes?'

‘Why was she banging the gun so much at our heads?'

‘I don't know, Annie. Maybe it is training for War.'

‘But why?'

I sniffed. ‘Oh, Annie, do you think Mother heard you talking about the Outside?'

Annie didn't stop from watching the Glamis Castles. ‘Does it matter now?'

‘Does it matter that she might have heard you let demonmales stamp all over her, and poor Emily, and the Garden's purpose, and our own special purpose too?'

‘Well, does it?'

Tears prickled my eyes. ‘Oh, Annie—'

‘Listen, Clam,' Annie grabbed my arm. ‘I'm still going out, you know that, don't you? That's the only thing that
matters now. And Dorothy and Mary and Nancy and Sandra are coming out, and maybe our other sisters too. Maybe us all.' Her eyes were shrunk to glass spits. ‘Maybe we're all going out. Maybe we won't come back.'

‘But look at our beautiful Garden, Annie.' I looked about where a cloud blanket was draped so low and safe I couldn't even see the rim of the Wall. Damp hung on our furs and on the night's leftovers – the barrow and the petal bin, and Annie's pile of Outside clothes. ‘Look how safe-kept we are. What will Aunty do without us when she comes back? Who will she prepare for War if we are gone? What will the roses do, and the pigs? Don't you want to fight in Japan, Annie? Don't you want to play in Heaven's Garden forever?' Tears were jumping out of me. I went to grab her arm. ‘Please, Annie. Can't you wait here twenty-eight more days till it's the proper time for you to leave?'

But Annie just turned back to staring at the Glamis Castles. ‘What do you think she's doing down there? I can't hear anything.'

I whispered that I didn't know.

Annie kept on looking. The sky lid sagged over us. All the Sacred Lawn was still.

After a bit, Mother drove back up from the yard into the Lawn. Mother had a stack of furs wedged between her lap and her chin.

Mother stopped the chair ten paces off us. She lifted the gun and rested it comfy on top of the furs. The gun's eye looked at me. ‘Attention!'

It shifted to Annie. ‘About turn.'

Mother marched us north onto the yew path, and now my sorry heart flipped to instant joy. Because here was
where all the past Emilys lived, all fourteen of them, going back in age to her four-year-old self. All were plinthed and polished in front of the yew hedges. Not one had rotted like pigmeat, or like Truly would have done under her mound by now, if she hadn't already been dragged down to Bowels.

Seventeen-year-old Emily had a lamb stuck to the side of her knee. Sixteen-year-old Emily was looking down over her full and happy belly. Fifteen-year-old Emily carried a baby sister in her arms. Fourteen-year-old Emily prayed under a crown of roses. Thirteen-year-old Emily was wearing wings taller than her own head. Sorrowful twelve-year-old Emily held a blooded cloth in one hand and pressed her other to her brow. Eleven-year-old Emily opened her sore bleeding heart for us to see it – a tear was stuck halfway down her left cheek.

Course, I started crying, seeing Emily bleeding there. Crying too hard to think about walking on, until the shotgun shoved me in the back. See, it weren't just poor Emily and her killing off I was remembering, it was each of her birthday parties, and how happy we had all been. How happy we all were, before Truly climbed up the Wall and Annie started wondering, and holes grew where they shouldn't, and ‘nothing fits proper now,' just like Dorothy said it didn't.

We passed eight- and seven-year-old Emilys. I tried to dry up. ‘I reckon we're being taken to see Mother's Glorious Abode,' I whispered in Annie's ear. ‘That's what I reckon. Now we're really going to see it.'

Annie said nothing. She was scuffing up the pebbles on the path.

We came to four-year-old Emily, kneeling in prayer in
front of the last yew bush, her eyeballs rolled up to Heaven. Mother's first and fairest, four-year-old Emily knelt by the bend in the path, which could only lead one place.

‘Now we'll see, Annie, won't we?'

We walked round the corner. I took Annie's hand to squeeze.

‘Didn't I say, Annie? Didn't I?'

But it wasn't the Glorious Abode with rooms of curtains and fire, like Aunty liked to talk about. There was nothing but a giant empty box in front of us. Wheeled. Its open doors blocking out the path up to the hedges. Its inside empty as a ready oven.

‘Halt!' Mother said.

‘I don't like this,' Annie whispered. ‘What's an Outside van doing here?'

I touched a door. Its skin was set cold like cream. ‘Maybe we're going off to fight, maybe that's what's happening, Annie. Maybe Aunty got it wrong. Maybe it's not Mary and Sandra and you going first. It's actually me and you.'

Annie grabbed my elbow. ‘Don't get in. Whatever happens, don't get in.'

‘Don't you want to go to Japan, Annie?'

‘You hear me, Clam, don't get in.'

The gun banged the air over our heads. ‘Weapons will get away from the doors! Grubby fingers off what doesn't belong to them.' Mother drove up and threw all my sisters' furs in the van. ‘Weapons will wrap and pack all statues. And there will be no cracking of plaster. Break a nose and a nose gets broken in turn. A finger for a finger, that's how it goes. Quite right, my angel, eyes for eyes! Action stations, weapons! Wrapping and packing! And you'd better be quick about it!'

Mother squeezed the chair round the van door and squealed away.

‘Off to her Glorious Abode, most probably,' I whispered.

‘I don't like this,' Annie said. ‘I don't like this one bit.'

We set to carting Emilys. We started with four-year-old Emily, who was light as a blown egg.

‘Shall we play guess whose fur is it?' I said. We laid down five-year-old Emily next to her sister on the van's floor, and wrapped her in a fur so rat-nibbled it could only be Millie Gatwick's. ‘You have first turn, if you like.'

Annie looked at me and she didn't say nothing.

‘We're probably getting new furs, don't you think, Annie? That must be what it is. Like that time Mother saw the back of a lorry and it gave her a bad fit of her sickness, and Aunty said we could burn all our rabbit skins for having brand-new minks. Do you remember that, Annie?'

But Annie was already running up the path for six-year-old Emily.

‘Guess something about our new coats then, Annie,' I shouted after. ‘Come on, Annie. Do you reckon it'll be mink or fox we're having this time?'

But she didn't hear me. She looked to be wrenching Emily off her plinth more careless than a carcass off a gutting hook. I jumped down and I ran after.

We were starting on ten-year-old Emily when Mother drove back round the van door. Two big cans were stacked on her lap. Wedged behind her, a third can was upside down, spilling out on the path and the yew hedge and everywhere. Looked like it was water glugging out of its mouth. We stood aside, and Mother drove away down the path and screeched off into the Lawn.

Annie stared after her. ‘I don't like this one bit.' She squatted down over the watered pebbles on the path. Rainbows shone on them. ‘It looks like slug slime,' she said.

It was most probably a special fertilising water I said. Possibly Heaven-sent, because of the rainbows in it.

Annie rubbed her fingers on them pebbles and held them to her nose. ‘That ain't no water, Clam. That smells stronger than Aunty's rat poison.'

I tried asking Emily if she knew what it was, but she didn't say nothing, which probably meant ‘Keep on with what you're doing, Clam, because it's early and I've gone back to sleep after a busy night.' So I said to Annie we better keep on wrapping and packing. And Annie kept on stopping and touching pebbles and sniffing her fingers, and saying, ‘I don't like this, not one bit, I don't.'

Sixteen-year-old Emily was something hefty, never mind she was hollow inside. I took a grip on her knees and I was saying we might coat her in Nancy's fur – the one that smelled of pig and molasses, and we could maybe use Dorothy's too, did Annie think? – when Annie dropped her hold, and said, ‘Hush up a second, Clam. What's that?'

‘What's what?'

‘Something's screaming.'

I stood up straight. ‘Why would anything be screaming, Annie?'

‘It's the pigs,' she said, frowning. ‘The pigs are screaming.'

‘But why would they be screaming?'

Before I could say ‘Don't,' Annie set off down the yew path towards the Lawn.

‘Come on back, Annie,' I shouted. ‘We ain't finished here.'

But, course, Annie didn't hear me. So I left Emily, and I ran after.

Well, even before I ducked through the Crèmes, I could hear them. There ain't nothing like a sore pig for wanting the whole Garden to know its pain. Scream loud enough to rattle the sky lid, a sore pig would. And they were all at it now, screaming like blades were twisting in their guts.

In the middle of the Lawn Annie stopped running. She turned and looked at me. Under her speckles her face was white. ‘Why are they screaming, Clam?'

My own bones had all turned to jellymeat, hearing those pigs. ‘I don't know, Annie. I'm sorry, I don't know.'

Annie ran to eighteen-year-old Emily and pulled herself up on the plinth.

She looked about everywhere. ‘There!' She pointed west towards the supplies barn and Nursery Cottage. ‘Over there. That's why.'

I followed her finger. Black threads were rising towards the sky lid like they were escaping from a poor-stitched cushion.

‘It's Nursery Cottage,' Annie said. ‘There's smoke flying out of the windows.'

‘Maybe Mother's having a bonfire of dead petals at the barn. Maybe that's what's got the pigs all hot and bothered.'

‘Or maybe it's something else.'

‘What else, Annie? Whatever else could it be? Annie, will you please get down off poor Emily.'

‘Them pigs are getting louder,' Annie said. ‘That smoke is turning blacker. Is it just the pigs, Clam? Is it just the pigs that are screaming?'

Well, there really weren't no answer to that.

Annie jumped down. ‘Come on, Clam, we've got to get to the yard before that starts smoking too.'

She set off running. But racing into the Glamis Castles, she skidded up.

Because here was Mother, coming up the other way, emptying a glugging can all about everywhere on the Lawn.

‘Oh, one doesn't think so,' Mother said, shifting aside the glugging can and settling the shotgun on her shoulder so its eye stared straight up our noses. ‘One doesn't think so at all.'

ABOUT-TURNED AND
back up the Lawn we went, the can on Mother's lap sicking out behind us, the air growing bitter to breathe, and the pigs screaming so bad, my skull felt near to cracking.

Into the yew path and back for sixteen-year-old Emily, we went, the gun's eye following us ten steps behind.

Annie looked at me. Tears were jumping out of her eyes. ‘This is bad, Clam. We have to do something. I don't know what to do. This is very bad.'

‘But this is all wrong, Annie,' I whispered loud as I dared. ‘Mother's not doing anything to hurt us. She's just burning stuff. That's what she's doing, burning stuff.'

‘What stuff, Clam?'

I didn't say nothing.

‘What stuff?'

‘Well, maybe Mother's cooking them pigs. Maybe that's what. Maybe she's cooking them up so Aunty will have a big pig dinner when she comes back from her holiday from us. Mother knows how Aunty likes pig dinners, so that's what she's doing. Cooking up a big pig dinner. Think
of it, Annie, tasty pig. Which bit of the pig do you want for dinner? I reckon a nice piece of bellyskin will do for me.'

Annie shook out her tears. ‘We have to do something.'

‘Oh, Annie, Mother doesn't want to harm us.' I took her hand to squeeze. ‘She rescued us. She chose us. We have purpose. Happen the pigs are just being silly. Pigs are silly, you know that. Scream if an eyelash is stuck, a pig does. Aunty will be back soon.' Tears were leaping out of my own eyes now. ‘She'll sort it out, won't she? Aunty sorts everything out.'

We were back at sixteen-year-old Emily.

‘Aunty will be home soon and she'll sort it out. We just have to wait.' I squeezed her hand bone tight, and truth be told, I didn't want to ever let it go. ‘Come on, Annie! Take a hold round Emily's knees with me.'

But Annie didn't. She stood staring up at the sky lid. Black flakes were floating down.

‘Come on, Annie, before Mother sees us dawdling.'

She looked back at Mother, who was glugging the can on the plinths behind. ‘Listen, Clam,' she whispered. Beneath her jumping tears her eyes were hard. ‘If this path goes off and meets them gates I saw, it might go to the road. I can go off to fetch Sam and get some help for us.'

‘Best wait for Aunty, Annie. She'll sort it. Aunty will sort it all out.'

But Annie kept on whispering like she hadn't ever heard me. ‘I'm going to shove this Emily at Mother. That's what I'm going to do. Then I'm running off.'

‘Don't talk nonsense, Annie. You can't harm Mother.'

‘Listen to me, Clam. I'm shoving Emily, then I'm running. You can come, if you want, but I can run fastest,
so happen it would be better if you could stay and hold her off, while I run and get myself outside the gates.'

I stared at her. ‘Who? Hold who?'

‘You know who.'