I Am Margaret

by Corinna Turner

  My heart was sinking. So much for a laptop to type my hundred thousand words.

  Jon went on, “The system is designed to sense any strange wireless device, you see. AudioPlayers and bookReaders don’t have wireless—they’re very simple, so they’re allowed. But no computers for anyone. Except possibly the Major and the Captain; nice Sally wasn’t sure about that.”

  “Well,” I murmured heavily. “That’s awkward.”

  “You were going to get Bane to get a laptop to you, were you?”

  “I was hoping.”

  “Perhaps he could get the wireless parts of it disabled.”

  “He doesn’t know how to do that. I certainly don’t. Do you?”

  “No. But I’d have thought some of his Resistance friends might know.”

  “No,” I said flatly. “I don’t want him getting in their debt. I don’t want him having anything to do with them. I’ll have to think of something else.”

  “You do need something, though, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I bet his friends could sort something out.”

  “Drop it, Jon!” I snapped. He was quiet for a long moment.

  “Good night, Margo.” I felt a gentle pressure as his lips touched the top of my head.

  “Good night, Jon,” I whispered guiltily. After a moment I said, “Jon?”

  “Umm?”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s all right.” He snugged me closer.

  “You don’t think she’ll be suspicious?”

  “Nice Sally? Trust me, she was far too busy staring at my chest to remember exactly what she said. She’ll just know we talked about how boring it must be being on guard all night and how inadequately Finchley’s being punished. Totally innocuous.”

  “How do you know she was staring at you?”

  I felt rather than saw his soundless laugh.

  “I knew.”

  We lay without speaking for a few moments, then I realized something.

  “Jon?”

  “Umm?” He sounded sleepy.

  “I haven’t actually said my prayers yet.”

  “Neither have I, actually.” But the following silence was punctuated by the sound of him drawing a long breath... “Margo?”

  “Umm-hmm.”

  “Can I make a suggestion? As, kind of, your prayer buddy?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Why don’t you stop trying the Act of Acceptance for a bit? Just for... a month, perhaps. Stop flogging an open wound and allow it to start healing. Because… no offense… perseverance clearly isn’t working.”

  I didn’t answer. I hated to give up. But…

  “Margo? Are you angry?”

  “No, I’m not angry. Just thinking. I don’t like to stop trying, but… the open wound analogy has some truth in it...” I sighed. “All right. It’s the thirty-first of March tomorrow. I’ll leave it until the thirtieth of April, then I’ll try again.”

  “Good. I know I’m not a priest or spiritual director or psychologist or anything but… I really do think it’ll help.”

  “Nah, admit it, you’re just fed up of being used as a giant handkerchief.”

  The soft peep of my alarm, set on minimum, woke me. Time to amend my letter. I’d brought everything I needed down to Jon’s bunk the night before, in the hope I might know what to write and catch the Tuesday post.

  In the early morning light streaming through a crack at the end of the curtain, I re-read the most important passage I’d already written to Bane.

  I expect you’ll be glad to hear I had an unexpectedly wonderful weekend, mostly due to having my absolute favorite meal. I ought to thank the chef and the waiter!

  Have you seen any eagles in unexpected places recently? I forgot to mention that in my last letter. They can be quite inflexible in their habits, so sometimes the native crows drive them out and make them roost with gentler birds—you might’ve spotted one already.

  Bane might not know that the symbol of Saint John was an eagle, but if the letter got as far as Father Mark he soon would. It didn’t really matter, anyway. Jon had been standing right beside me on the battlements, Bane must’ve seen him.

  I squeezed my second orange segment into the little jar—it was half dried up but there was enough juice—and placed letter and notebook on Jon’s chest in lieu of a table.

  “Should I stay still?” he yawned.

  “Please.”

  Bane, I don’t like asking you this when my short story is so unlikely to win, but if I can’t have a novel ready I might as well not have entered. I can’t write a novel in two months by hand so I was hoping you might smuggle our laptop to me, but that’s not going to work, you understand? I cannot have a laptop, they can detect their wireless and they’re absolutely forbidden.

  But I have to have something to type on and the only thing I can think of is an antique device from the 1900s called a ‘typewriter’. It’s a sort of mechanical device for typing text. I’m afraid I don’t have any idea where you can find one, let alone one in working order, nor how you can get it to me. I think they’re quite big and I’d need paper as well. I’m sorry to be so hopeless and so demanding, but I’ll have to leave it all up to your ingenuity.

  I re-read what I’d written and chewed the end of the empty fountain pen for a while as the drying lines disappeared from sight.

  “Good morning, girls and boy,” called nice Sally, opening the door. Light flooded the dorm and everyone began to stir. I dipped the nib again, hesitated one last time and added:

  I’ve acquired the means to move around the compound at night.

  Collecting my letter from home at breakfast, I carried it eagerly back to the dorm.

  Dear Margo, thanks for the story, I think it was absolutely perfect and easily the most horrible thing you’ve ever written in your life. Sue’s accepted the story all as requested, so that’s fine.

  I hope you had a nice weekend, I went bird watching at last and had a great time, I took your little lion with me. I spotted that gorgeous bird and I was a rather naughty bird-watcher ‘cause I fed it, but I don’t think it did any harm. I saw an eagle near my beautiful bird, which was very unexpected. Any ideas on why the two species would be sharing territory?

  Shame about Harriet’s hair straightener—I know how much she liked it. The letter before last was the best you’ve sent me and I’m still re-reading it all the time. I’m getting a lot out of it.

  I slid down from my bunk, letter in hand, and climbed in to sit beside Jon.

  “Okay, this is the important bit.”

  I read the paragraphs to Jon.

  “So the story’s gone in,” he murmured, “he spotted me on the wall with you so he knows I’m here and he’s studying the plan.”

  “That’s about it, yes. Looks like he’ll understand my eagle reference, anyway.”

  “So what now?”

  “So now I get on with planning this novel, and we wait for Bane to produce something for me to type it on.”

  “Which he’ll get to you how?”

  “I’ve no idea. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

  But I knew. I knew what he’d have to do. But I couldn’t say it. Couldn’t suggest it.

  “Exercise,” called Watkins, opening the door, so we all got up and filed out. Watkins nodded cheerfully to Jon and me despite his own still slightly swollen lip. Finchley, the second guard, waited in the corridor, but he stood with his head down, not looking at any of us. A large dressing covered one entire cheek.

  “Has someone cut himself shaving?” sang out Jane mockingly. Watkins let out an unusually harsh guffaw but Finchley shot me a hate-filled look—me, not Jane—and went back to glowering at the floor.

  At Jon’s “Huh?” I filled him in. He snorted.

  “Or one of the other guards has slugged him one,” he muttered.

  “D’you think they would?”

  “Watkins might’ve, don’t you think? I mean, if he was younger...”

>   True. Well, it was clear no one felt sorry for Finchley, including me. So he’d got a hurt cheek. He’d live.

  I opened my letter on Friday with shaking fingers.

  Margo, I have such a lot to tell you. I saw this marvelous vintage machine called a ‘typewriter’: can you imagine it? Lots of little keys. It doesn’t look like it’d be at all efficient, but still, fascinating thing.

  My parents are having their usual grand barbeque and grille next Thursday night. They’ve bought 1 bottle of champagne, would you believe, and 3 bottles of wine. My dad has the 2 barbeques ready and intends to cook 9 or 11 steaks on each one at once! My mum’s polished all 4 garden tables and is worrying whether to seat 6, 7 or eight at each one. And my dad’s opened up all 5 of his boxes of wineglasses and discovered the first two have only got 10 and 11 glasses in them respectively, and they’re supposed to hold 12 (never 13!), so you’d think the world was ending!

  I’m sick of it already and I don’t think I shall even go—it won’t be the same without you. Now, I know you worry so much, but really, I do think it’s for the best. I’m not going to become totally antisocial, I promise. I’ll be very careful about that!

  Blast, I was going to write more, but my mum is calling me to help clean the patio, joy, joy and more sopping joy! You must write and tell me what you think about this year’s barbeque and how you think I can survive it without you by my side!

  I re-read the letter over and over. Thursday night. That was the bit that stuck in my mind. And that apparent misspelling; the use of ‘grille’ instead of ‘grill’. But the numbers also drew my eye, that casual mixture of numerals and words. The Marsdens hadn’t held a barbeque in their lives. And there was no way they could possibly afford the food and equipment Bane listed. Who could, in Salperton? So it all meant something else. This was too close to math… I took my notepad out, turned to a back page and armed myself with a pencil.

  Right. There were five sentences before the numbers started… then the first numeral in each sentence went up in ascending order, with the highest being 5. So say that was the sentence number, the other numerals might be word numbers? Let’s try that, then… I quickly jotted words down, my heart seeming to constrict my chest as the message appeared:

  have typewriter can you be at grille next Thursday night

  ***+***

  17

  THE TYPING DEVICE

  Now I saw it in black and white, the enormity of what he’d have to do took my breath away. And for what? For the sake of a novel that would never be needed?

  Trembling, I climbed down to Jon’s bunk and tucked myself between him and the wall.

  “What’s wrong with you?” he asked, slipping an arm around my shoulders.

  “Bane proposes to stroll across the killing zone in the middle of the night and shove a typewriter through the parcel hatch to me.”

  “I doubt he’s going to just walk across. He’s not suicidal.”

  “Okay, so he’ll probably crawl along the drainage ditch. But it’s almost as dangerous.”

  “And how exactly did you expect him to deliver your typing device?”

  “All right, so I kind of knew! But it’s gone far enough. I won’t let him do it. I’m not going to win and I’m going to forget the whole thing.”

  “But what if you do win?” asked Jon, a note of challenge in his voice.

  “I’m up against every other aspiring writer in the whole EuroBloc, Jon. I’m not going to win. And I’m not getting Bane killed. Not for this.”

  “You’ve got a gift, Margo. The One who gave you that gift intended you to use it. I think you can win. Creative writing, this year of all years? I damn near believe you’re going to win. And I reckon Bane thinks so too or he wouldn’t be willing to deliver that typewriter…”

  “Bane would do it just to see me, I reckon.” Right now, I’d do it to see him…

  “Maybe, but you’re avoiding the point. You can win. But winning this thing will be wasted if you don’t have that novel ready. Do you just want to let that short story be published, glamorizing Sorting, presenting it oh-so-positively? Don’t you want to present the counterargument?”

  “Of course I want to present the counterargument!”

  “Then you need that typewriter thing. Bane’s going to bring it to you. All you’ve got to do is go get it from him. He’ll be careful. It’s not like he hasn’t had experience at that sort of thing.”

  “Since when has he had to crawl along a two hundred meter ditch with his life depending on not making the slightest sound?”

  “Well, not a two hundred meter ditch specifically, but he’s been out with his Resistance friends a time or two. It’s got to be pretty similar, hasn’t it?”

  There was a rather long silence, because the constricted lump that was my heart had just lodged itself uncomfortably in my throat.

  “You… didn’t know about that, did you…?” muttered Jon, when the silence stretched on and on.

  I swallowed.

  “Yes, I… think I did. I just didn’t want to admit it to myself. He didn’t tell me, if that’s what you mean.”

  “How close… do you think he is? To joining them?” asked Jon awkwardly.

  I swallowed again.

  “Close enough. I mean, their priorities aren’t the same—Bane’s most worried about Sorting and suppression of freedoms while the Resistance don’t seem to care about anything other than making the departments into countries again, but still… they break stuff and piss off the EuroGov, so… I’m just praying that… me being sent here… won’t tip him over the edge.”

  “Yeah,” said Jon grimly. “What’ll you do if he does join?”

  “Well, I won’t exactly be very happy about it. But he knows what I think of them; he’s got to make up his own mind.”

  “Well, on the same note, are you going to let him bring the typewriter?”

  Part of me wished I’d not told Bane that vital fact, that I could now get around at night. But say I could win? How could I ignore such an opportunity? But how could I forgive myself if Bane got killed, and in such an uncertain cause? Still, Jon was right. It wasn’t for me to make up Bane’s mind about this, either.

  “All right,” I said heavily. “I’ll meet him and get the thing. But I tell you, I’d better win after this!”

  “I’ll ask the Lord to see to that, shall I?” smiled Jon.

  “You do that.”

  Squeak.

  My straining ears caught the faint sound as the night guard opened the hatch and took her hourly glance into the darkened dorm. One o’clock.

  Squeak.

  The hatch closed again.

  “Time to go,” breathed Jon.

  Thursday night, and my ugly gray jumpsuit already nestled, folded, down the front of my nightie, secured by a belt. I’d been careful to fall down in the dirt of the exercise yard earlier, to avoid any chance of appearing mysteriously dirtied in the morning. In Tuesday’s letter I’d told Bane I thought one-thirty was a suitable time to make his escape from the dreaded barbeque. Everything was arranged.

  I picked up my dressing gown, took the precious card from inside Jon’s pillowcase, and transferred it to the pocket.

  “I’m your prayer support,” whispered Jon. “See you in a bit.”

  “See you.”

  I slipped from the bunk, putting on my dressing gown and shoes quietly, but without any suggestion of stealth. Walking to the door, I paused in front of the buzzer, then moved on without actually touching it, standing as close to the card reader as I could. After a suitable length of time and making sure it was shielded—most especially from the direction of Jane’s bunk—I swiped the card and held my breath…

  The light flashed green.

  I pushed the door open and walked out, saying softly to the nonexistent guard, “Thanks, sorry it’s so late,”

  In the washroom, I changed into my jumpsuit, with my sweater underneath. The nightwear I left on top of the toilet tank in the farthest cubicle—t
here wasn’t any real hiding place for it.

  A dim light glowed over the stairwell door, allowing the guards to see and the camera to see them. I swiped the card with my head turned away from the camera, much good that’d do, and headed down the dark stairs. My breath misted the air in front of me. That would show up particularly well on the cameras. No matter. If they played the footage back, the game would be up, anyway.

  Reaching the door to the parking area, I peeped through the window beside it. This was the really risky bit. The door was in sight of the tower guards. But since no one could threaten the towers from here, they wouldn’t be looking, right? Lord willing.

  I swiped the card again and opened the door just a crack. Slipping through, I moved smoothly to crouch behind the nearest car. No sudden movements to draw the eye. Peeping up at the towers, I calculated their lines of sight. Right, well, it might not be the most comfortable way to do it, but it was clearly the safest…

  Lowering myself flat onto my stomach, I wormed underneath the car and headed for the guardroom, making like a snake. My knees and elbows complained bitterly, but slowly and silently I crawled until I reached the last car. There was the guardroom door, about three meters away...

  My groping hand found two small stones. I chucked the first at the door. It made a nice sharp tapping sound. I drew back into the darkness beneath the car and waited.