The First Book of Calamity Leek (6 page)

HAIR HELP
– YOU CAN'T BE TOO CAREFUL HERE, YOU REALLY CAN'T.

HONEY, CURDS, EGGS
MIX – APPLY ONCE A WEEK, UNLESS YOU'RE A TANGLED BUSH-HEAD LIKE ANNIE ST ALBANS, IN WHICH CASE YOU NEED TO DO THIS EVERY
TWO
DAYS.

ADDITIONAL MEASURES –

EGG YOLK CONDITIONING
IS GOOD FOR GREASY HAIR LIKE NANCY'S, AND MIGHT ALSO BE GOOD FOR MRS WAVERLEY,
IF YOU WANT TO TELL HER. UP TO YOU, DOCTOR ANDREA DOORS.

VINEGAR AND WATER
IS A PERFECT FINISHER FOR A MOTHER IS COMING TO LUNCH! DAY.

BODY
– HEAT UP BEESWAX WITH WATER AND FLORIBUNDA ROSE ESSENCE FOR CREAMY MOISTURISING EFFECT. APPLY WEEKLY TO FULL BODY, NIGHTLY TO HANDS, FACE AND NECKS AFTER CUSHION LABOUR.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THIS FILLS IN ALL KNOWN CRACKS, DOCTOR ANDREA DOORS !!!!!!!!!!!!!

AND HERE'S THE APPENDIX'S QUICK
B FOR BEAUTY REMINDERS
–

BEAUTY ISN'T A PART-TIME JOB – IT'S A FULL-TIME COMMITMENT.

BEAUTY ISN'T A GIFT – IT'S A WEAPON.

Hope this helps, Doctor Andrea Doors. I wouldn't bother with your hair, seeing as it is dead, but do try rubbing beeswax in your face cracks. But like I say, it ain't a cure and won't deceive them demonmales for long. Sorry, but you're too far cooked for that.

By Calamity Leek. THE END.

ANNIE HADN'T BUDGED
her bottom from the mending room door.

She was squatting there after breakfast, knocking on the wood and waiting for Truly to knock back, when I went to rinse my teeth at the standpipe. And she was stood there, picking at the lock on the bolt, while us other sisters were gathering to read the duty list on the dorm wall. Never mind that duties were to be done, the list said,
without any distractions from a certain body in a certain room, if nieces know what's good for them. Out of sight is out of mind, ladies
. Never mind all that, because even while we ran about preparing for duties, Annie was still glued to the mending room door, picking at the bolt and calling ‘Hello, hello' to Truly through the cracks.

I dragged Maria out of her Hole, and over to the standpipe to give her a hosing down. Maria wasn't ever listed as being a capable working body, but I reckoned that didn't mean she couldn't learn something by watching us, did it?

‘Annie, you coming on over to the Boules now?' I shouted, keeping one hand on squirming Maria. ‘I reckon
those sorry old Boules need some fair old TLC, and you're listed with Mary and Millie and me to do it.'

But Annie didn't say nothing for dropping herself belly down in yard dirt.

‘Annie?' I said. ‘Well, don't mind Annie,' I said loud and clear to Maria, releasing her to run herself screaming dry in the yard, ‘because there's them that are bothered about harvesting petal protection for all, and there's them that ain't. And besides, Maria, happen we might just pop by the Sacred Lawn on the way, and ask Emily for a miracle for Truly, happen we might.'

Course, Annie's head popped up at this. But then she shrugged and turned back down to start on talking to the crack under the door.

We did stop off near the Sacred Lawn. Me, Mary Bootle and Millie Gatwick, and Maria, course. We had to be quick, the Lawn being Out of Bounds In All But Exceptional Circumstances, and Emily needing her space. But then I reckoned Truly was exceptional, wasn't she? And Aunty was still off in the north with Mother.

Still, I kept all my toes in the Glamis Castle soil on the south border of the Lawn and all off the grass. I kept my head ducked out of the Crème de la Crème climbing rose arch, which we had growing at every entrance to the Lawn circle – north, east, south and west, most probably so Emily could have a nice view from where she was stood in the middle, and nice smells too. Course, I couldn't see more than Emily's toes from outside the arch, but never mind, I closed my eyes and stuck my nose in a low-down Crème de la Crème and sniffed up its sweetness, and I asked Emily if she was listening in there to please help Truly get better, I really did.

Mary Bootle finished first and turned and set off stomping down the barrow path east through the Silver Anniversaries. Mary was swinging her plaits something cross, and never mind them plaits were the longest in the Garden, they were bashing petals off the fullest Anniversaries as she went.

I shouted for her to wait up. But Mary didn't hear me, being too busy shouting on about the duty list always letting the Pontefract twins take care of the second-wind toddlers, and not her, and it wasn't fair, was it? And that's what Emily should really sort out if she was going to sort anything, and matter of fact, that's what she asked her to do first, so there.

So I shouted to watch the roseheads, please, Mary, and that she could wipe Maria Liphook's bottom if that's what she was after. Because not one second after I'd got her head pointing straight down the Anniversaries path, I am sorry to say, Maria had turned and run off grub-hunting in soil.

‘Nancy says she doesn't know why you even bother learning a mashhead,' Mary said, swinging her plaits all scornful, ‘“Why does Clam even bother?” That's what Nancy says.'

‘Well, Nancy can go talk to her pigs,' I shouted up. ‘Happen she's learned her manners from them.
Every niece in the Garden is a Valuable Asset
– that's direct from page
N
of the Appendix, Mary Bootle, in case you forgot it –
every niece
. If Maria was allowed in our lessons, happen she'd be less of a mashhead and more of an Asset.'

‘Well, Nancy says you've gotten loonheaded yourself, for bothering.'

Millie Gatwick came panting up the path behind us
with the barrow, Gretel rat sitting up on the shovel handle, her white belly out. ‘Bothering what?'

‘That rat's gotten herself fat with riding about all these days,' I said. ‘I am only telling Mary how Maria Liphook was once reckoned to be as brimful of brain fibre as Dorothy Macclesfield before.'

‘Before what?'

‘Before she started hitting the Wall. Hitting her head on it so hard that Aunty had to mend her. Aunty had to – Maria being the first-rescued and first meant for unleashing. You can't go to War all covered in bruises.'

‘But Sandra Saffron Walden says she's off first.'

‘That's what she thinks, but don't forget, Maria Liphook was rescued a whole year before Sandra. It wasn't months after Emily returned to Heaven, that Mother got Maria. “My Miracle Baby,” she called her. And you know why she called her that?'

‘Spitting Image,' Mary flung back from where she had swung off into the Icebergs. ‘Everyone knows that.'

A red admiral flapped past. Maria Liphook dived off after it.

‘But what about Sandra?' Millie said. ‘Ain't she Emily's Spitting Image? She says she is.'

I watched Maria crashing through Iceberg bushes, petals falling off wasted as latrine paper scraps, and I shook my head. ‘Fact is, it was Maria who started the most Spitting Image of all of us. She was some years older than us when she was rescued. And she wasn't grown in the yard – not for months, she wasn't – no, first off she lived up in Mother's Glorious Abode. But when Maria started with the Wall-banging, well, Aunty realised the mistake right there and then. Never mind that Maria was a Spitting
Image of Emily, happen her brain was already fried up from having lived too many years Outside. “Over-cooked with Outside ideas” is how Aunty said it. Least a hundred mending room days it took for giving Maria a little more heart and a little less head. And in some ways it worked out. I mean her heart ain't questionable now, is it? Come on, Maria.' I went in after her, squeezing my tummy careful between the thorns, and pulled her out by her smock bottom. Don't ask me how, but she had a snail oozing in her fist. ‘Wipe off that poor creature, Maria, it can't play with you now. Just you follow the bug jar, Maria. Follow the bugs.'

That most nasty piece of work named the Sun had finally dragged Himself over the new Wall top, and was sizzling angry by the time we got Maria to Truly's Boule bush. And it was a sore sorry sight, that bush, it really was. Truth be told, and as I did tell Mary and Millie, taking the pruners from the barrow to get straight to work, ‘This is about the worst place Truly could ever have chosen for landing. Must be ten heads lost, maybe even the whole bush.' The perfume of them ruined blooms was leaking sweet as honey tears. I plucked one of Truly's hairs off a thorn and sliced the cane three inches below, ‘But if we take cuttings from the strongest, we may get some re-growth next year. Millie, you'll still be around for that harvest. What do you reckon to that?'

Well, seemed no one was for answering me but a passing bee.

I popped up and squinted about. Maria Liphook was squatted down stroking a dead beetle, an Outside plane was roaring all high and mighty above, but there weren't one snip of my sisters' tools going on.

Then I heard it, the eastern Wall, wailing.

Except Walls don't wail, do they? Only one kind of body does that. I dropped my pruners and hurried over.

And sure enough, there were Mary and Millie at the Wall, sitting their bottoms beneath Truly's scuffle marks, busy with nothing but crying.

‘What are you two fussing about here for, when there are bleeding Boules to care for?' I said.

Mary looked up, her blue eyes dripping. ‘Golly, Clam, as if you didn't know.'

Now babies-on-the-brain Mary was known to turn on the waterworks most days. So I said I didn't, actually. ‘Dry up, sisters,' I said, ‘and come on back to your work. Aunty's over in the Glamis Castles. She's heading back to the yard.'

And she was.

Twenty-four-seven, three-six-five
, that's how the Appendix sets down the size of Aunty's Tender Loving Care for us. And like Dorothy will tell you about numbers, they ain't never wrong.

But Mary didn't budge a finger. ‘I ain't getting up just because you tell me to, Clam. I'll jolly well sit here and cry if I choose so. And I do so. So there.' And she wedged the end of her plait between her front teeth and sawed it about, like that was a way for a Heaven-intended body to behave.

‘I see,' I said, though I didn't. ‘And what about you, Millie Gatwick?'

Now, like I may have said, Millie's got the wobbliest eyes ever poked out of a face. Some said there were frog parts gotten in there, but that weren't really true. Except when she was crying. When she was crying, you'd think she lived under water. Millie shook her head at me and
two tears plopped out at once. ‘I'm sorry, Clam, it's just I keep on thinking about Mother. Oh Clam, if Truly goes and dies, Mother might have to rescue another sister. Like after Carmen died from the flu and Mother went and rescued all the second-winders. Only what if she goes out and – and—'

Gretel rat came scrambling up Millie's smock, and set to licking up her tears.

I sighed. ‘Happen I don't know, Millie. But Aunty does say the second-winders were an unnecessary acquisition. So why would Mother want to go out for more?'

‘But Clam—'

‘Yes, Millie,' I said, thinking on Aunty's telescope, sat out on the balcony of the High Hut, sweeping round and finding our lack of labour, thinking on saying, ‘Hurry up the waterworks, Millie.'

‘Oh, Clam, me and Mary were thinking—'

‘What, Millie?'

Mary Bootle wailed so loud her plait popped out from her teeth.

‘Oh, Clam, what if Mother does go Outside, and she's gone so long we leave for War, and well – and well – and well – and well—'

‘HEAVENS, Millie!' I gave her a slap before she drowned herself, and never mind the damage being done to her tear ducts.

‘Oh, Clam, what if Mother's gone so long that we're sent to War, and we never get to see her eyes.'

Well. Well, I sighed out slow as a dying dog before I could answer that one. ‘Listen, Millie, I don't know nothing for sure. But I do know that Mother, being Motherly, she will probably want to be around to see us making our
goodbyes. And being Motherly, she might not say no, if we ask her to show us them eyes on our way out.'

‘Is it promised in the Appendix then?'

‘I'm afraid I ain't ever read that in there for sure. But her last goodbyes to Emily, now they are written down, aren't they?'

Millie gulped and a tiny smile crept about her lips.

‘And I'll tell you what, they went on for years, them goodbyes. “Years and bloody years” is how
Ophelia Swindon Volume V: A Country Diary
says it.'

Mary wiped up her eyes with her plaits. ‘I remember.'

‘And I'll tell you another thing. Look up at the Wall rim. See them glass jewels sparking off His heat. Finer than
My Fair Lady
's tiara, I'd say. Would Mother have topped off the Wall with what looks like her own jewels, if she didn't want to say “I'm going to stay around to say goodbye”? I think not. So come on, dry up. Them poor Boule heads ain't going to heal up themselves, are they?'

Well, I'd just about heaved my sisters to standing when the communicating post at the top of the Boule row hissed. A magpie sitting on top yelped and flapped off.

BING BONG
, the Communicator said,
BING BONG
.

I went to land Mary a punch, but happen it wasn't us being caught dawdling on duty. It was an announcement.

‘An announcement. Eldest nieces – that's Sandra, Dorothy, Annie, Calamity, Nancy and Mary only – may run along to the mending room to visit their dearest sister and their loving Aunty's loveliest charge, Truly Polperro, who is currently lying in the recovery position. One never likes to tempt fate, but this does sound like promising news, doesn't it? This offer is solely for eldest nieces. As a consolatory treat for the rest of you, your loving Aunty
has generously agreed to perform a little ditty. It's called “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” Answers on a postcard, please!'