The First Book of Calamity Leek (7 page)

Mary jumped up, ‘Supercalifragilistic!'

I laughed and spun her around in a dance. ‘Expialidocious!'

The Communicator started on Aunty's ditty. And Mary and me kissed Millie Gatwick farewell, and raced ourselves back to the yard before Aunty's offer ended.

AFTERWARDS, WHEN WE
had left Truly alone to receive Aunty's Tender Loving Care, I tried to keep my snivelling stoppered up inside me. I did try.

Nancy flicked my ear as we walked out into the yard. ‘Nearly did it again, eh? Sister Sneak,' she whispered. ‘Very nearly.'

‘Leave her alone,' Annie said, coming up behind and giving my shoulder a quick squeeze. ‘Clam didn't say nothing.'

‘No, Annie, I didn't.' I wiped my nose on my sleeve, and I headed for the standpipe and calming water. It was a tricky enough job to keep my words from breaking up. ‘But
you
should have, Annie. You really should have said something.'

Annie shrugged. She came along after me and leaned against the latrine wall and started kicking at a loose clot of yard concrete.

I pulled off my headscarf and jammed my head under the tap to let cold water drown me out. But all I saw was Truly lying deadmeat in straw. Truly looking so ready for
her shroud, that when Mary Bootle opened the mending room door, she screamed, ‘She's dead! Truly's jolly well gone and died, and a demonmale's going to come and drag her down to the Devil's Bowels any second now!'

I shivered, but I kept that water pouring its cleansing chill on me. ‘You should have said on the injuns, Annie. For Truly's sake, you should have told Aunty.'

Annie flipped the concrete out of the ground with her toe. She spun round and kicked it hard at the latrine wall.

Wham.

‘Sit down, if you're staying.' That's what Annie said, when me and Mary stopped dead at the mending room door, our happy giggles turning to screams. ‘Sit down and hush up.'

Annie, Sandra, Dorothy and Nancy were all squished along the wall next to Truly, who was all clean for once, in a fresh smock in fresh straw. Annie was kneeling by Truly's head, stroking Truly's hair which was laid out all neat. She wasn't taking her eyes off Truly's closed ones. ‘And don't talk on dying, because she can hear you.'

Sandra looked up, her pretty pink cheeks puffed damp. ‘Truly is crying.'

‘And deadmeat never manages that,' Nancy said, jabbing at a wart on her toe. ‘Left eye. Take a look.'

Well, sure enough, the eyelashes on Truly's left eye were wet. And even though her eyelid was shuttered up, a tear slipped out of the corner and rolled sideways over her cheek, and plopped off into straw.

‘She's been at it since we came in, and who knows how long before.'

I whispered the only thing I could think, ‘Is she turned Liphook?'

‘No!' Annie hissed.

‘Well, Annie—' I felt my own eyes filling up, watching Truly's left one pop out another tear, ‘—well, I am very sorry, Annie, but this carcass lump don't look much like our giggle-mouthed, bendy-boned, non-stop-chatterbox sister to me.'

‘Well, that's where you're wrong, Clam,' Annie flashed back. ‘All wrong. She can hear me and she can answer me. The only thing she can't do yet is talk. Which she will do soon enough.'

I looked at Truly, who weren't saying nothing to this, nor looking like she was even bothering thinking it. Nor bothering thinking any other blessed thing for that matter. ‘But Annie—'

‘Take her hand.'

‘But it ain't doing nothing, Annie.'

‘Just take it.'

So I squeezed myself up the other side of the room, and took up Truly's hand from where it was laid on her belly. And though its palm was warm, I am sorry to say her fingers were about as lively as stale bread.

Annie's eyes sizzled at me. ‘Now ask her if her name is Truly Polperro.'

I looked around my sisters. Dorothy nodded.

‘Go on,' Annie said. ‘Ask her.'

‘Very well, Annie.'

And I tell you this for bone marrow truth, next thing happened was Truly's fingers started to curl up round mine. Sure, they went at it slow as slugs shifting a leaf, but they did curl up. Felt like I felt the tiniest squeeze before they fell loose again.

‘Now ask her another question,' Annie said. ‘Ask her the
other
question.'

Well, my mouth dried to dust at that.

‘Ask her.'

I kept my eyes on Truly's hand. ‘Truly Polperro, listen to me carefully. When you went climbing did you see injuns outside the Wall?'

Not a finger budged. Not one.

It was all I could do not to gasp. ‘Are you sure, Truly? Are you sure?'

And Truly's fingers stayed flopped.

‘Oh, Truly!'

‘Now you know,' Annie said.

‘But Annie, that ain't possible,' I said. ‘Look at her, how can she know what she's saying?' And my own eyes fogged up, and happen I didn't want to look on our deadmeat sister no more, with her flopped-out fingers, and her eye full of tears. I didn't want nothing more than fresh yard air pouring into me. I laid down Truly's hand on her belly and I scrabbled for the door.

‘Going somewhere, niece?'

Aunty, that was, arrived behind me, so I near enough fell into her shoes.

‘Morning, ladies. What a pleasant surprise to find you all here. May I say it makes for a very touching scene. Act one. Scene one. The death bed. Or should I say sick bed? What do you think, nieces? Death has more drama, but with sickness there's always the hope of a cure.'

Aunty wasn't in her gown no more, but dressed up in white, with a belt like a tyre gripping her tummy and shiny black tights holding on to her legs. She had taken off her moisturising gloves, and she held the
Reader's Digest Home Medicine Manual
all careful between her
creamy fingers. A cherry-red smile was painted where her lips used to be.

‘You seem to be in a hurry to leave us, Calamity. Not a fan of sick rooms? Perhaps you'd like to pick yourself up out of that draughty doorway and get back inside toute suite. That's spelled S-U-I-T-E, nieces. Think Hyde Park Hilton, Nancy, rather than those nasty sugary things that pile on the pounds. You others, budge up. It is a tight squeeze in here, but trust me, ladies, you'll always have room for a small one.'

I shuffled back in next to Nancy, and wiped off my eyes.

‘Come along, Calamity. I said “Going somewhere?” It's your line. Need a teensy prompt? Very well, you were about to shed some light on what provoked this emergency exit of yours, how about that? After all, any information is useful when we're fighting the Devil's heat.'

Annie's green eyes flashed up, ‘Is that what you think Truly's got, Aunty?'

‘Why, niece? Don't you?'

And Annie shook her head for yes and then for no, which was something muddling. And quicksharp, I looked over at her, and I thought, ‘Tell her now, Annie. Tell Aunty about the injuns, and Aunty will sort it out. Aunty always sorts it.'

But Annie didn't.

Aunty said, ‘Curious child,' and turned her eyeball back on me. ‘So where were we? Oh yes, darling little Calamity here was going to get the ball rolling by spilling the beans. Because it really is time we got to the bottom of what happened to poor old Truly, isn't it, and I just know you girls have your sister's best interests at heart. And you,
Calamity – my most compliant of dollar dolls – have clearly got something to get off your chest. A nice, clear voice now, because a lady should always annunciate, articulate, implicate.' Aunty smiled at me. Her top teeth row was creamed with cherry.

Well. Well, what could I say?

See, Aunty's eye was joined by my sisters' ones, and every one of them eyes was pinning me down, until it got to seeming it wasn't the mending room I was stuck in, but a roasting corner of Bowels. But instead of demonmales with skewers for the spit, it was Aunty waiting to tear me one way, and my sisters another.

Well, my eyes were gushing and my nose was gushing, and all I could hear was words gushing out of me, ‘No, no, I don't know. It ain't fair that it's always me that has to say things. Annie knows, Annie knows, ask Annie.'

‘Annie? Annie St Albans?' Aunty sighed. ‘I might have known. Well then, Annie, my sweetie-niecey-pie, do stop picking holes in the plasterboard, straighten that spine, and let's be having it.'

And Aunty stared at Annie, and Annie looked straight back at Aunty and shrugged all her bones at once. ‘None of us knows anything,' she said. ‘We found Truly on the bush and Truly hasn't said a word since.'

And Aunty went, ‘Nothing? Not a squeak, not a peep, not a sausage?'

And loud and clear and cold as water, Annie said, ‘Nothing.'

I looked up quick, and there was Annie looking straight at me. And there was Aunty's eye starting its swivel over us, one by one, steady as a crow after the first twitch of a worm.

‘Any thoughts on the matter, dear unfortunate Dorothy? You didn't eat Truly's voice box, did you, Nancy? Calamity Leek, for heaven's sake, wipe that nose. Snot is unsightly in anyone, and nothing less than nauseating in nieces. Thank you. Now I'm going to give you all one last chance to add illumination to Annie's bobby-dazzler of an explan­ation. One very last chance, nieces.'

Only one thing moved, which was a dribble from Truly's left eye.

‘No?' Aunty said. ‘Dear oh dear, how very disappointing. So, my flap-eared friend, there's nothing at all to report?'

I didn't need to look up to know Aunty's eye had fixed itself on me.

‘Nothing you'll regret later? Because a lady should never have regrets.' And Aunty bent low and whispered into my ear, ‘Well, not to worry, ma chérie. Tête-à-tête, à deux, peut-être?'

Then Aunty thunked me on the head with the
Digest
and said, ‘Oh do quit snivelling, child. If there's one thing I loathe, it's a sniveller.' And then she shooed us all out of her sight, and told us to get back to work or target practice or something, because we were clearly useless at even the most elementary of role plays, and Truly needed her spoonful of sugar to help her medicine go down in the most delightful way.

Out in the yard, I turned off the standpipe.

‘Why didn't you, Annie? Why didn't you say the truth to Aunty?'

Annie stopped kicking at concrete. ‘It's only words, isn't it? How can telling those words to Aunty make Truly better? How can words be medicine?'

‘But what about the danger? We should tell Aunty in case them injuns are off planning a surprise attack by sneaking up someplace else.'

Annie said nothing. She watched me dry off my face with my headscarf and cover up safe again. Appendix words came into my head then. This is what they warned in
S
–

Did you know, a niece with a secret is like a dog with a chicken bone – seems tasty, but BEWARE! Gobbled down in private instead of shared with Aunty, it'll snag in her throat and choke her to death.

I began to say this wisdom to Annie, when she burst out laughing at me.

‘Annie?' I stepped back from her. ‘Annie, this really ain't a time for laughter. We really need to think about the dog with the chicken bone.'

But she just shook her head, laughing.

‘What?' I said. ‘What is it? Because getting your throat choked ain't funny, Annie, it really ain't.'

‘You're right,' she said. ‘Sorry.' She tried to shut up her smile. Then she shrugged, ‘Sorry, Clam. Only, I've just been thinking, and it's plum simple, it really is. Truly's getting better. You felt her hand, it was moving. And when Truly is strong enough to talk, well, then she'll tell us exactly what she saw Outside. In fact, Truly being Truly, we'll never shut her up, will we? And then we'll know what to think about injuns and everything, and how to tell it all to Aunty. Fact is—' and every one of the speckles on Annie's face jumped up happy like I hadn't seen since Truly fell down, ‘—fact is, Truly can tell Aunty herself, soon enough, all we actually have to do is wait!'

I blew my nose on my smock and I thought about the sense of this.

Annie grinned. She turned and squeezed me up in one of her bone-squeak hugs that she really does better than anyone. ‘Come on then, race you back to the Boules.'

And we ran through the gate, and up the barrow path holding hands, which is nice to do, even if it is a bit tricky on the bends. And I looked at Annie, with her curls bouncing out under her scarf, and her nose turfed up high, which is how Annie always runs through roses, since she and Truly and me were little and they ran along laughing and shouting out behind, ‘Come on, Calamity Slow-Feet, catch us if you can!' And I squeezed Annie's hand and I said to her, ‘Catch me if you can, Annie!' And her eyes fizzed with laughter. And my own heart flipped happy. And I thought again about her words, and I thought, yes, happen we will just have to wait for Truly to explain what she's seen. Aunty will make her all better soon enough. Aunty will sort it. So we will all just have to wait and see.

MY SISTERS' VOICES
are echoing something busy in my ears tonight. Not just Truly. Annie, Dorothy, even the second-wind toddlers are going on at me. But I'll put them away for a little while, because here I am, ready and waiting for you, Jane Jones.

Course, I expect you won't come till it's safe black outside. I understand that. But it's gone dark beneath the blinds, and this room's grey as mould now Mrs Waverley's scraped her bottom off the chair, and the lights went off after her. Is it nearly time?

Do you know there ain't a single pipistrelle in this room, or one harvest spider sewing up the ceiling, or even a woodlouse poking nosy out of the floor. You wouldn't think one woodlouse would be a problem, wriggling about next to a bed-stuck body, or even hid under the bed out of the way. You wouldn't think that.