“Get up there, all of you!” snarled Captain Wallis, driving us all before her.
“You finished, Sid?” asked Richard, down in the Lab.
“Yeah, heart’s all packed up, you want anything else?”
“Not from a forty-two year old. Let’s knock off.”
And leaving their red coats with a minion, they strode out of the room.
“Gather around, girls,” ordered Captain Wallis, “Take a good look. Very few people have an opportunity like this outside of medical school, you know.”
Tearful and cringing, everyone tried not to look while looking like they were.
“Isn’t it simply fascinating, girls?” Captain Wallis was saying. Her eyes were strangely hot and she kept moistening her lips. “To be able to see a human body in parts, to know this is what a human being is—mere intricacies of flesh and blood and bone…”
Her voice hardened. “To know there is nothing more to it. That a dead body is made up of only two things—useful parts and useless parts. That the human race is made up of the same—useful people and useless people. This superstitious witch doctor is one of the useless ones—his only usefulness is in death. Rather like you girls,” she finished deliberately.
Harriet started crying so hard I gave her a hasty hug. She wasn’t the only one to break down completely. Captain Wallis licked her lips yet again, seeming to savor the moment.
Until a very simple girl called Bethan spoke up innocently.
“Don’t people have a magic part or something? My great granny’s magic part went to a lovely place, Mummy said so. So hasn’t his magic part gone there too?”
Captain Wallis reached Bethan in two strides, grabbed her by the collar and dragged her forwards, shoving her face close to the glass.
“Your mother lied to you, you credulous idiot,” she hissed, then went on gloatingly, “There is no such thing as a magic part. There is no lovely place. Your great granny no longer exists and nor does this fool. This is all that is left of him.”
I stood there looking down at my friend’s warm, still remains, the warden’s twisted triumph ringing in my ears, and something I’d never really felt before bubbled up inside, hot and black and corrosive, like red-hot, poisonous teeth sinking into my soul.
Hatred.
I hated her. This stupid, short-sighted, sick woman. She hadn’t even killed Uncle Peter herself and yet at that moment I hated her far more than Richard or Sidney or the judge or the minions. They’d been doing a job, but this woman had enjoyed every minute of Uncle Peter’s torment.
Images cascaded through my mind, memories from earliest childhood, Uncle Peter lifting me up, up onto his shoulders, Uncle Peter sitting on the carpet with me, trying to teach me subtraction with rows of sweets, Uncle Peter saying Mass, holding the bread before our eyes as it became Our Lord, Uncle Peter listening gravely to every little childhood sin I confessed, replying with words of healing and encouragement, always, always taking me seriously in everything, always, always teaching me, teaching me math, teaching me morals, teaching me hope, teaching me joy… and this woman, this stupid, wicked woman, dared to gloat over his physical body, dared to say that was all he was!
I wished her in hell and I could’ve sent her there myself.
“Margo?” whispered Caroline tearfully, staring at me wide-eyed.
My teeth were about ready to break, they were clenched so tight. With effort, I relaxed my mouth, realizing Captain Wallis hadn’t finished with Bethan yet—Bethan was crying and struggling as the warden pushed her face harder and harder into the glass.
“Open your eyes, you little fool! Open them! Take a good close look...”
“Please,” sobbed Bethan, “please, I’m sorry! What did I do? Please, I don’t want to, please stop…”
Captain Wallis put a finger and thumb to Bethan’s face and tried to force her lids open—Bethan started screaming...
I’d reached them before I was aware of taking a decision to move; I pulled Bethan out of the Captain’s grasp and pushed her behind me.
“How dare you...” hissed the warden.
My mouth opened on vicious, venomous words… And again I saw Uncle Peter, lying on that table, his fingers raised in blessing, heard his voice whispering, ‘I forgive you’. I stood there in front of the woman and though I shook from head to foot, I swallowed those words. I don’t know how, so it must’ve been grace. It was not me.
“Captain,” I said coolly instead. “I was just wondering; when is the next ReAssignees Welfare Board inspection?”
She stared at me, reading the anger and hate in my eyes, seeing the rebellion in my interference and definitely understanding the threat in my mild words. Her hands twitched, as though she’d smash my head into the glass. But it was a very good threat.
“Girls,” she barked at last, still staring balefully at me, “You will each take a proper look at these useless scraps and when the last one of you has done so, you may go back to your dormitory.”
Everyone shrank back, so she grabbed the nearest girl and shoved her up against the glass as well, and as the girl stumbled away whimpering, everyone suddenly decided to obey after all. There was rather a scrum as they all tried to touch their noses to the glass to prove they’d done it.
After that, satisfied at last, the warden marched us back to our dorm, where chaos promptly reigned. Girls threw themselves into each other’s arms, sobbing, or lay on their bunks, staring at the wall; Jane paced up and down the center of the room, snapping at anyone who got in her way; Sarah, Bethan and Hazel went into a nervous huddle and Harriet, Caroline and Annie continued to cling to me like limpets.
I tried my best to comfort them but I was near the end of my tether. I shook uncontrollably, nausea threatened to overwhelm me, and I kept losing track of who’d said what to whom. It was no use. If I didn’t get out of there, I was going to lose it.
Pleading a need for the bathroom, I coaxed Harriet, Caroline and Annie into a mutual hug and bolted for the buzzer. Fortunately the guard arrived before anyone noticed my sudden availability as a shoulder to cry on, and I made my escape.
“You going to be long, lass?” asked the elderly guard, sounding bored. He made no move to step into the washroom and out of the camera’s eye—the smarter guards knew better. Apparently it wasn’t totally unknown for a girl to take such an error of judgment as an opportunity for a bit of revenge, and claim some inappropriate behavior had occurred. That was a career-stopper if the RWB—ReAssignees Welfare Board—got to hear about it.
“Probably,” I said, as calmly as I could.
“Give me a buzz when you’re done, then,” said the guard—‘Watkins’ read his badge. The stairwell door clicked closed behind him as he headed back to the guardroom.
Laudate Deum, I was alone. I could hold it off no longer; shudders wracked me from head to foot and my stomach began to heave in earnest. Diving into a cubicle, I kicked the door shut behind me and was violently sick. I went on being sick until eventually there was nothing to come up but bile and kneeling there, my forehead pressed to that cold cinder block wall, I cried and cried until my face was on fire and every drop of water in my body ought to have evaporated from it.
Uncle Peter, dead.
Uncle Peter, slowly, agonizingly dead, a piece at a time.
There was no escaping the truth of what I’d seen with my own eyes.
I beat on the wall, blind to the pain, barely retaining the sense to stop before I laid my knuckles bare, for how would I explain that? The tears would not stop—hope had vanished from my soul like a forgotten dream.
Curled up with my hands over my head, I rocked to and fro, fighting with my helplessness, my loneliness, my terror. Uncle Peter was dead and my parents might be about to go the same way. They were unlikely to be sentenced to conscious execution, but dismantled they would be if Uncle Peter was traced back to them.
And—oh Domine Deus!—to my shame, a selfish thought, a selfish but oh so ghastly thought crept in amongst the res
t. What would it be like to live out my two years here almost completely alone, knowing almost all those I loved were dead and even though Bane still lived, he was cut off from me, unreachable as the moon…
No, I was being foolish. If they took my parents, they would come for me too. They would take me before a judge and bid me speak the words of Divine denial; my refusal to Apostatize would condemn me for Personal Superstition and I would simply be dismantled immediately, instead of in two years.
My heartbeat steadied slightly and the chill eased its grip on me. Immediate and painless entrance into Our Lord’s company instead of two long years of lonely misery; that wasn’t so bad, then.
But Mum and Dad… where’d Uncle Peter been staying? He could’ve been staying at five or six different houses, he moved often—after all, even much-loved uncles or family friends didn’t visit all the time. Was it my own family or another that were about to share his fate?
His fate… Uncle Peter…
Tears. More tears. Ridiculous, I was going to dissolve. Don’t cry, Margo, just remember him... But the memories brought tears. Receive the soul of your faithful servant, Lord. Take him to yourself...
Then Uncle Peter’s smiling face filled my mind, driving out the memory of that ruined one we’d left in the Lab. Don’t cry, Margo, he told me, just as if he’d surprised a childish tear on my cheek. The Lord’s written you a letter, ‘specially for now. I knew the ‘letter’ and words from it were suddenly whispering through my mind…
…Desiderat, languens concupiscit
anima mea atria Domini…
…For the courts of the Lord’s house,
my soul faints with longing…
…Transeuntes per vallum aridam,
fontem facient eam…
…As they go through the Bitter Valley,
they make it a place of springs…
…Vere melior est dies unus in
atriis tuis quam alii mille…
…Willingly would I give a thousand of my days
for one spent in your courts…
…Domine exercituum, beautus
homo qui confidit in te…
…Lord of hosts, blessed
is the man who trusts in you…
Those verses were like a light shining into that terrifying blackness and they left me a little calmer. Uncle Peter was in the courts of the Lord’s house, and the Lord was still with me.
A knock on the door and Watkins’ voice jerked me from my contemplations.
“It’s supper; you done in there, lass?”
“I’ll be right out.”
Getting up, I flushed the toilet and went to wash my hands, checking my face carefully in the mirror. My last tears had fallen long enough ago that my eyes weren’t too red, but I splashed a bit of cold water on them all the same and dried them carefully with toilet roll.
I shouldn’t have hidden in here for the last half hour. What if the Rats learned that a priest’s execution had made me behave like this? Suspicion was all it took, for the invitation to make the Divine denial provided the rest. Still... it’d been a choice between a breakdown in public or a breakdown in private, so... couldn’t be helped.
Right. Supper. I’d never felt less like eating. Everyone was coming down the passage; Watkins had unlocked the dorm. Supper and unhappy comrades in distress. I squared my shoulders and headed for the door.
There was no time to amend my letter after supper: my friends attached themselves to me and I hadn’t the heart to shed them again. I set my alarm early instead.
My night prayers flowed in my mind, comforting and very welcome, until the last one. I approached it rather warily and tried to recite it nice and steadily, hoping to just run through it, but when I reached ‘quodcumque mortis genus’ the words stuck in my throat and choked me. Whatever kind of death.
The very worst mortis genus had been revealed to me today, in all its stark agony. Had I ever really appreciated what this prayer said at all? Whatever kind of death. Even Conscious Dismantlement. Even that. The ultimate Act of Acceptance of the Lord’s will. For His will was that all humanity should have Free Will, even judges and dismantlers…
The idea of me, there in Uncle Peter’s place, had me sweating in terror. I tried and tried to find the willingness in me, but still the words brought me to a halt, shaking with fear.
What are the odds of you ending up in that situation, Margo? Minuscule! But still, I couldn’t speak. I could not. Finally, I gave up and just lay there, tears of shame drying on my cheeks.
***+***
7
THE LATTER YEARS OF PETER RABBIT
I did my best to eat something, lest my parents worry, but it was a waste. I didn’t seem to taste any of it.
“Let’s go and dance,” I said after a while, and ignoring Mum’s dire warnings about catching cold, I slipped off my jacket and left it behind. Most girls my age weren’t wearing big coats, and I couldn’t afford anything distinctive. I did borrow Dad’s football cap, pulling it down over my face.
For a while I almost forgot our little enterprise, since it was hard to think about much else when dancing with Bane. He swung me and spun me until we were both draped dizzily over each other for balance, laughing hysterically.
When they were almost ready to start, we slipped quietly away. We’d not be the only young couple sneaking off into the night, fence or no fence. Bane scaled the thing again in that dark corner while I rolled my skirt up by a couple of feet, the chill night air raising goosebumps on my bared legs.
“Uh... what are you doing?”
“Avoiding distinguishing features. And if it keeps the guards’ eyes off my face, so much the better. It seems to be working on you.”
Bane’s blush was almost, but not quite, invisible in the darkness and he dragged his eyes back to my face at once.
“Okay, well,” he said hastily, “I looked at a program. The Minister for the British Department just has a very short bit tonight introducing the Chairman, so when he gets up, you draw the guards away. Just after the Chairman starts his speech is about when I’m aiming for the things to start going off. That should upstage him nicely, don’t you think?”
“Just slightly! But for goodness’ sake be careful.”
“Yeah, ‘course I will,” and with an oh-so-reassuring flip of his hand, Bane disappeared between the huts.
Previous experience at Annual Summits left me in little doubt that even after the speeches had started—or perhaps especially then—there’d be plenty of people hanging around the edges of the sports ground. So I headed along the fence until I was only a short walk from the gardeners’ hut, but far enough away that I wouldn’t be visible to the guards.
Now came the waiting, the ridiculous hype of the High Committee’s arrival, the extremely lengthy descriptions of how honored little Salperton-under-Fell was this night, and the tedious introductions on stage. It barely penetrated my brain as I pictured Bane creeping slowly through the undergrowth, circling behind that little shed. I should’ve asked him how exactly he planned to get in...
“And now, it gives me great pleasure to welcome to Salperton-under-Fell, this night, Donald Grisforth, our honored Minister for the British Department…”
My cue at last.
Jerked from my half-conscious state by my alarm, I got up reluctantly and dressed. Taking my letter to the table, I found a nice wide margin along the side of an inner page and set to work.
P. S.
You know you made me promise to tell you how my story ‘The Latter Years of Peter Rabbit’ ended? Well, I can hardly bear to do so, the ending has turned out so sad.
Dear old Peter Rabbit goes to Grandma Jemima Puddle Duck’s pond to visit, because she’s sick, but since he’s such an old rabbit by then he gets caught by a human, who takes him home and chops him up to make a stew. Only, then the human realizes there’s not really enough of him to make a stew, so he goes out and starts hunting for the warren, so he can eat all Peter’s little bunny children as we
ll.
So you see, it’s terribly sad and I’m so very sorry to have to tell you about it. Anyway, let me know if you would like me to send you a copy, it’s only short, but I imagine you perhaps won’t, with the ending having finished up like that!
Love, M xxx
I read the postscript critically. I couldn’t do much better than that. Since they knew nothing of any ‘The Latter Years of Peter Rabbit’, let alone a promise about it, surely they would understand what I was telling them? So might a priestcatcher, but that I would have to risk.
Breakfast wasn’t for another fifteen minutes; my little addition hadn’t taken as long as I’d feared. I fetched my notebook and headed a fresh page:
The Latter Years of Peter Rabbit
Margaret Verrall
Just in case I found pursuivants crawling out of the woodwork—concrete—here.
We posted our letters at breakfast, those of us who could write well enough to send them and had someone to send them to. There were some blessings to count. I finished the story then, before our gym session. It extended to only five sides, was far from the most inspiring thing I’d ever written, and I was glad to be finished with it. But it existed. That was enough.
“Margy! Story, story!” Sarah tugged at the pad eagerly, seeing I’d finished.
“I don’t think you’ll enjoy that one.” I detached her hands gently and flicked back to the beginning of the pad. “How about ‘The Diary of a Fellest Ewe: Part One’?”
“Ewe, ram, lamb,” recited Sarah. “All sheep.”
“Yes, I think that will be right up your street.” Which was why I’d started this Facility pad with something so pleasant. “Are you sitting comfortably?”
I Am Margaret Page 7
