“Did you see that?” he gasped. Far too loudly. He was almost shouting as he caught my arms. “Did you see that?”
He broke out laughing in earnest. Among the very genuine mirth there was a ragged edge of pain.
“Be quiet!”
I clapped my hands over his mouth and his laughter trailed off abruptly. Deafened and stunned. And... my hands came away from his face covered in soot. Bother.
“Come on!”
I pulled his arm over my shoulders, the better to aim him in a straight line. He stayed silent, so perhaps the shock was wearing off. I stopped near the hut where we’d talked earlier, beside a boot washing station, yanked off my wellie and used a sock to give his face a speed wash, ignoring his flinches.
We looked and listened carefully for guards before heading over to the fence, but his first attempt to scale it brought him to his knees, clutching his chest and gasping. No, he wasn’t just stunned...
But we had to get over now, before the guards got themselves organized. I dropped to my hands and knees, patted my back and pointed most emphatically up over the fence. Reluctantly, Bane stepped up onto me and Deus omnipotens he was heavy, but a few moments later he was on the other side of the fence, albeit hunched over and gasping again.
Frightened and bewildered, everyone was pouring out of the sports ground, and at the moment the guards on the gates were letting them, rather than have a panic break out if they tried to keep everyone there.
Bane’s pinkened skin and blackened eyebrows were rather obvious in the lights. I pulled his hood forward, gave him a meaningful look and shoved his face into my hair before slipping an arm around his waist.
The guard on the turnstile was too busy talking on his walkie-talkie and looking around wildly at the surrounding area to pay us any attention. The reader peeped happily at us both and we hurried on with everyone else.
Did half the guards even realize the explosion had been caused by the fireworks and not by the Resistance? Bane and I had certainly expected nothing more than a lot of fireworks going off in rather rapid succession.
My house was only about four kilometers away, so we headed that way at the best speed we could manage, Bane’s arm still around my shoulders, his face still hidden against my hair. This was going to start some rumors of gun-jumping, if any of our year saw us. But he was walking almost straight and even turned his head slightly at the sirens of four police cars that went tearing past.
We didn’t stop, or speak, until we’d shut my front door behind us.
“You’re not bleeding, are you, Bane?” I only had to speak a bit louder than normal, now.
“Not bleeding. Think my flaming ribs are broken,” he gasped.
“Let me see...” I slipped a hand under his coat and sort of patted him over, checking for blood... no, that wasn’t going to be enough. “Let’s get you upstairs.”
I tried to take his arm again—he flinched, swore, apologized, and walked up under his own steam, shoulders hunched. I sat him on my bed and began the painful business of peeling off his layers of clothing. He flinched and swore some more, and bit his lip rather too hard.
Oh, it was his back that was becoming one enormous purple black bruise!
“What happened, Bane?”
“There was a knot in the wood of the door,” he wheezed. “Saw it at the weekend. So I took my waterpistol with me, filled with petrol,” he nodded to the rucksack now lying on the floor and I realized what the smell was that I’d been dimly aware of.
“I squirted it all through the hole, shoved it back in my rucksack, then lit a scrap of paper and dropped it in. I heard the petrol catch and legged it. The fireworks seemed to be going off just the way I hoped, so when I got inside the bushes I stopped to watch. And then BANG. I went flying—literally—flung my arms up behind my head, good job, ‘cause I hit the boundary wall, whack. Lay there in a heap until everything stopped flying around. Then got up and started running. Trying to run. I just couldn’t go straight. Good thing I found you, ‘cause I reckon I was making a hell of a lot more noise than I realized.”
“Too right! I thought a rabid bear was on the rampage!”
“Well. Thank you for coming to help me.”
“Help you! I thought you were dead, you stupid fool!” I hugged his head and even that made him wince.
“Sorry. Didn’t realize that was going to happen. Or I’d have used a fuse cord or something. They won’t play that down, though!” He started to laugh again, then winced and went motionless. “You know, I think I just want to lie down on your bed and stay very still. For several days.”
“Well, let me put some cream on your face first...”
“Hang my face!” His hands gripped my duvet, white-knuckled. “Er. My head’s going all funny, y’see...”
“Whoa, let’s get you horizontal!” I sprang up and pulled back the covers, ‘cause he was literally about to keel over in a dead faint, if he was admitting to it.
“Where,” he demanded through gritted teeth, once he was lying on his stomach, “is adrenaline when you need it?”
“I’d say it was right when you needed it!”
His eyes slid closed and I sat looking down at him anxiously. What if something was actually broken? Did he really need the hospital? But his injuries were too suspicious; hospital would get him executed.
I settled the duvet gently over him against the chill—even that made him twitch.
The sound of the front door...
Oh no! I’d left my parents at the sports ground, in the middle of what appeared to be a terrorist attack, with no idea where I was.
My turn to wince.
I stood by the little window the following evening, looking out at the shadowy forest and breathing in the fresh night air—and trying to ignore all the strategy discussions going on behind me. The Prize was still playing hard to get.
“My mum told me guys want a nice girl,” Annie was telling Harriet, very seriously.
“More than nice legs?” asked Harriet in disbelief.
“Which do you think is more important, Jon?” asked Jane smoothly. “Legs or nice?”
“Just be careful,” put in Rebecca, “if you say legs, Jane will claim you by virtue of the fact that she has the longest legs in the dorm.”
I couldn’t help glancing around at that. Jonathan stirred from his own—bleak?—thoughts and smiled slightly.
“I think I’ve already made it clear legs aren’t my highest priority.”
“So you want the nicest?” said Harriet excitedly. “That’s settled, then! But…” she deflated slightly. “Who is the nicest?”
“Looks like you’re out of the running,” said Rebecca, smiling sweetly at Jane.
Jane scowled. “Looks like Jon and Sarah are going to be an item, then.”
“I didn’t say I wanted the nicest,” said Jonathan dryly. “I want the one I like the best.”
“You’re still out the running, then,” murmured Rebecca to Jane.
“Oh, shut up. At this rate no one’s going to have him. He seems to have the sex drive of a castrated snail.”
“Snails are hermaphrodites,” said Jonathan, very blandly. I stared at him, sitting there surrounded by girls. Which one did he like best?
I rested my elbows on the windowsill and went back to the view and the night air and all the things I was trying to get out of my head...
A faint tap tap of a stick behind me. Jonathan. How did he find me? Did he sniff me out or recognize my breathing, or some combination of the two? He always knew who’d approached him before they spoke.
“Margo,” he said quickly—and very softly—in Latin, as though he didn’t want to waste our private moment. “Have you thought about that thing we have in common, what it means for me, being here in this dorm?”
His odd words came back to me, the first day he was in here...
“Complicated?”
What was so complicated? A burst of giggling made me glance around again; sure enough, the gigglers
’ eyes were fixed on Jonathan. The penny dropped belatedly, a big, dangerous penny—oh yes, he would’ve preferred to stay in the boys’ block and die nice and safely over there—nice and safely for his family and the precious safe house, anyway.
“Oh no…” My voice dropped even further. “If you don’t choose anyone…. someone will suspect.”
“Exactly,” he said grimly.
“Yet you can’t choose anyone.”
“No priest, no marriage rite, no way.”
I swallowed a couple of swear words. Despite his little revelation yesterday, I’d scarcely been able to think about anything other than Uncle Peter—okay, Uncle Peter and Bane—and this glaringly obvious problem hadn’t registered.
“I hadn’t thought. I’m an idiot. I can put my mind to it or… have you thought of something?”
“I have. The only thing I can think of. But I’m very embarrassed to ask. If it wasn’t for what’s at stake—if I didn’t know you understand what’s at stake—I wouldn’t… but, if I don’t choose a… girlfriend… soon… I don’t trust Jane, she’s too sharp…” he trailed to a halt.
A tinge of red stained his cheeks—a second penny dropped. He really was embarrassed. Because he was saying he was going to have to choose me. And we’d have to pretend a whole lot more!
No way! I wasn’t going to pretend to be sleeping with him! Okay, so no one in here would think anything of it, but rumors would get out. Reach my parent’s ears, perhaps. Worse, Bane’s ears. No! Absolutely not.
I opened my mouth to tell him so in no uncertain terms, but… My heart sank as my mind crunched on with unstoppable logic. If we didn’t... someone would point at Jonathan and whisper ‘Underground’. And then he and his parents and any Underground members staying with them would die. Any members arriving at the safe house for some time to come would die. Some of them would be priests, sisters, rabbis, imams… They would die as Uncle Peter had died.
I swallowed. The truth staring me in the face was simple enough—my reputation wasn’t worth that much. I suppose… the Lord would know what had or hadn’t happened and Bane would just have to take my word for it. As for the sheer cheek-combusting embarrassment of it all… Lord, help!
“Relax,” I said glumly. “I’ve caught on. And…” I ran the situation and proposed solution through my mind a few more times. “There really doesn’t seem to be much option.”
“Sorry,” he murmured.
“Well, I’m not much of an actress.” I bit gently at my lip in sudden worry. “Well, at least I like you; I think. Let’s hope that’s enough.”
“I don’t think we need to crawl all over each other in public.” His cheeks heated again. “I think if we just—act like we’re getting cozy for a day or so and then start sharing a bunk at night—that’ll be enough. Ah…” he sounded strangled, “more than enough, I know.” His face was brick red now.
Sharing a bunk. Aaaaaw! Was I going to have to sleep crammed up against this near-stranger for the next 724 days? Still, better than even one person dying and there was no getting around that.
“It’ll be all right,” I said. Who was I trying to convince, him or me? My mind insisted on replaying Jane’s words... my heart beat a little faster. Jane’s mind was already turning in dangerous directions. We’d really better not take too long about this...
Jonathan must’ve been thinking the same thing.
“What are you doing by the window?” he asked curiously—and more loudly—in English. His hand brushed down my back and settled around my waist, fingers curling around the front of my hip. It took all my self-control not to stiffen and push his hand away. Oi, I wanted to say, you don’t know me well enough to put your hand there.
But I couldn’t do that. I stared out into the darkness and managed to smile.
“There’s a nice breeze tonight. Feel it?”
“Yes. I wonder if spring is really coming. Feels like it’s getting colder today.”
His right hand stayed around my waist. I stood still and let it remain there. I should respond in some way, but this was harder than I expected. It hurt my self-respect to let him touch me like that. I wasn’t his. He wasn’t mine. We weren’t sworn to each other in whole and wholesome union. Never in my entire life had I presented myself as a mere sex object and now… being touched like this by someone I didn’t love felt too close to it for my liking.
He rubbed my hip gently; leaned close to my ear as though to give some flirtatious remark.
“I’m so sorry about this.” He’d felt my discomfort. What he could feel, others might be able to see. This wouldn’t do.
I laid my hand over his; entwined our fingers. Murmured in his ear, “It’s not your fault. We’ve got to get this right.”
His unseeing eyes stared through me, sad and sincere.
“Yes, we have.”
I let him snug me to his tall warm side, trying very hard to relax.
“Hey, hear that…”
The sound of wolf song floated to us on the nice breeze. I listened eagerly but Jonathan shuddered.
“For once I’m glad to be in here.”
“Don’t like wolves?”
“No. I never walked far from Little Hazelton ‘cause I was always afraid there could be one there, about to eat me. They’re so quiet.”
“Huh. I don’t like bears. They’ll eat you.”
“Yeah, but they make noise walking around.”
I shrugged and managed to slip my arm around his waist in return.
“Never met a wolf that’s given me any trouble. They just look at you and lope away. ‘Course, I generally carry a big stick.”
“Bane says they like you,” said Jonathan, smiling.
“Well, when they meet him they show their teeth before running off. So I always reckon they simply don’t like him!”
“Well, I just wish they’d never escaped way back when. You know there never used to be any in this department, right?”
“There were, and then there weren’t, and now there are again. I don’t mind them; so long as there’s plenty of prey, they’re not aggressive. One day the EuroGov really will have to reconsider the hunting ban, though, when the numbers of deer drop too far and they get hungry.”
“Can’t be too soon, in my opinion.” Another wave of wolf song reached our ears. “Do you mind shutting that window? They do give me the creeps.”
I complied, shutting out the wild music of the night. Regretfully.
As we moved away from the window, still coupled up, Jane’s snide voice cut through the dorm.
“Don’t look now, girls, seems the snail’s finally made his choice.”
“Margaret Verrall,” I told the guard distributing the post the next day. He slapped a letter into my hand, yawned, and turned to the next girl, who was actually a boy called Jonathan. “Thank you,” I said calmly, moving on, but my heart pounded in my chest.
I had a letter. So my parents were okay, or had been yesterday. Of course, if they were taken, I’d be taken too, so I’d know soon enough, but still… I had a letter.
Jonathan gave his name, took his own letter and followed close behind. We’d stayed mostly joined at the hip since yesterday, in that way newly forming couples do.
We sat together now, with Sarah, Harriet and Annie in the seats nearest to us.
“…I don’t see why you’re so surprised,” Rebecca was telling Jane at the table behind us. “I think they’re well suited to each other. You’re just a sore loser ‘cause she outsmarted all of us—including him.”
I tried not to listen.
Most people were spooning their cereal with one hand and clutching their letters in the other as they read, but I wanted to sit in the comparative privacy of my bunk while
I read mine. I tried to quash the ridiculous hope that Bane might’ve written something. My parents would probably want the first letter all to themselves. I gobbled my breakfast and sat, waiting impatiently for everyone else to finish.
Pretty much leaping up on
to my bunk once we got back upstairs, I pulled the pages from the envelope—already open from the censors—and unfolded them. It was good and fat! Mum’s handwriting...
Dear Margaret,
We’re so glad to hear you’re settling in all right. We miss you more than we can say and think about you every minute of the day.
The first page continued in the same, unexpectedly sentimental vein, but when I reached the second page I understood. Just filling up the space most likely to be read by the censor.
We were ever so sorry to hear how your story finished, it’s a much sadder ending than we wished for. I hope you weren’t too unhappy when you thought it up. Don’t worry about sending a copy, I don’t think we need any help feeling sad, just at the moment.
You’d think having our only daughter in the Facility would be enough troubles, wouldn’t you, but we’ve seen rats around the house. We’ve had to put off your cousin’s visit, you know how he is, he’d die if he met a rat in the house, and I’m sure we’d die of embarrassment!
I wouldn’t want you to worry about our rat problem, though, because ‘rat problem’ makes it sound much worse than it really is. It’s in hand and we’re not worried about it. If your cousin wasn’t so nervous we’d have let him come,but… well, you know him as well as we do! There are an awful lot of rats around in Salperton at the moment, I hope you don’t have any at the Facility.
I turned to the third page but I could barely read the sentence to the end; I’d already seen the handwriting underneath.
Anyway, we have here a young man claiming to be our future son-in-law and in light of this your father and I feel we must yield these inner pages to him…
***+***
11
THE COMPETITION
Margo, are you OK? I hope you are. I can’t tell you how desperately tempted I’ve been to take up bird-watching, especially since I heard how your story ended. Can you guess what species I’d be looking for? The most beautiful bird in the world, with soft brown plumage and the most amazing green eyes—I saw one around Salperton a lot until recently.
I Am Margaret Page 11
