I Am Margaret

Home > Other > I Am Margaret > Page 23
I Am Margaret Page 23

by Corinna Turner


  “Margo?”

  “Margo?”

  “Are you all right?”

  Someone handed me a tissue and I wiped my mouth, sitting back on the cold linoleum. Get yourself together, Margo, get yourself together, you’re being silly… but the room and the sea of anxious faces swung echoingly around me and I buried my face against my knees, sobs escaping at last.

  “Margo…?” Jon’s hand touched my shoulder and I tried again to get myself together, but it was too late. Too late.

  “Move aside, move aside. What’s the matter, now?”

  Watkins was approaching. I folded the letter small with trembling fingers and slipped it into Jon’s hand.

  “Margo’s ill,” Rebecca was telling Watkins. “She’s been sick and she’s all white and shaky. I think she’d better see the d…” Bless her, she hesitated on doctor just in time, replacing it with, “the nurse. I think she should see the nurse.”

  “Margaret? What seems to be the trouble?”

  I raised my head and found Watkins peering down at me.

  “I’m fine,” I managed. “Really.”

  “You don’t look fine, missie. I think you’d better go have a lie down in sickbay. Get up on your feet now, if you can. Give her a hand, girls. Brandon, you come with me; Dwight, stay here.”

  One of the guards who’d been dishing out the breakfast came through from the kitchen to join Watkins, which would leave his colleague on the other side of the hatch and Dwight in the cafeteria, both in sight of one another. I don’t think Watkins—or any of the guards—thought I’d been lying about Finchley, but they knew it paid to stick to the rules.

  I was annoyingly wobbly in the legs, but managed to walk to the sickbay under my own steam, though

  Watkins and Brandon hovered as though I might keel over at any moment. The nurse examined me, pricked my finger to check my blood sugar, took my blood pressure and temperature, and since none of them were desperately low, concluded we’d have to wait and see if I was coming down with something or if it was just a blip.

  She made me lie down until lunchtime, then had me returned to the dorm, though under an injunction against attending afternoon exercise. Reassuring and fending off my crowd of wellwishers, I let Jon put his arm around me, feeling like the world’s largest cowardly custard.

  “Margo?” It was Jane. She stood at the end of the bunk, where she’d been standing since I was brought back in. Waiting.

  “Yes?”

  “Just wondering what you’ve done with that useful art case of yours?”

  “Oh. That.” I bludgeoned my brain into action. “I had to give it back, you know.”

  “Shame. It was useful, wasn’t it? You wrote an awful lot of stories on it.”

  “Umm,” I agreed, trying to look wan and sick.

  “And where are they, Margo?”

  “Where’s what, Jane?”

  “That huge heap of stories you wrote? They’re not in Jon’s chest any more, are they?”

  I glanced at Jon, wondering how he’d let her get a look.

  “Sarah was upset about you being taken off, so Rebecca said she’d read her a story if she could find one,” he said emotionlessly. “Sarah thought they were in my chest and had a look.” Before I could stop her, I heard the silent addition.

  “But not a page in sight,” said Jane too sweetly. Had she even put Sarah up to it? “So she tried your chest, Margo, but they’re not there either. I thought you’d written us a… a lifetime supply,” she said blackly. “But now there’s just a little pile of the ones you’ve read us already. Sarah was very disappointed.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry about that.”

  “Well, Margo?”

  “Well, what, Jane?”

  “Where are the stories?”

  “They’re gone,” I said bluntly. “We won’t be seeing them again, I’m afraid.”

  “Did you destroy them? Or give them away?”

  “I really don’t see it’s any of your business what I did with them,” I retorted, and buried my face in Jon’s hair.

  “Well, perhaps I think it is!” snapped Jane, undeterred. “You work and work on all those stories for two months like you’re obsessed, secretive as anything, won’t let anyone read them, keep telling us to be patient, and then the entire stack disappears overnight. I reckon the stories have gone to the same place as the typing machine and I’m very curious to know why!”

  “Leave her alone, Jane,” said Jon coldly. “She’s got more important things to think about than your cat-like curiosity.”

  “Like what?”

  “I think you’ve discussed such things before and I think you’d be advised to leave her to it! Lest she leave you ...to it!”

  Jane’s mouth clicked shut and she stared at Jon and me for another few moments, but most of the anger had gone out of her glower. Finally she turned and went back to her own bunk.

  “Are you feeling better?” murmured Jon.

  “Yes. I’m so embarrassed.”

  “Is Bane okay?” From the way he said it, he’d been waiting to ask ever since I’d been brought back. Oh… he hadn’t heard my letter yet.

  “Oh, yes. Goodness, yes. It’s not that. I was just being… just being incredibly spineless. Bane’s handed the manuscript in, y’see. It’s done.”

  His arm tightened convulsively around my shoulders.

  “Libera nos, Domine,” he breathed in my ear. “I’d say it’s just beginning.”

  I wound my hands into his top and buried my face deeper in his hair. He smelt of peppermint; his parents had slipped sweets into his letter again.

  “Jon, I’m so frightened,” I whispered, unable to hold it back any longer.

  “Oh. Of course you are.” He folded me tightly in his arms. “Of course you are. You’re going to be fine, Margo. You’re so brave. And Bane will do his part and we’ll do ours.”

  “But what if the worst happens?” My voice would’ve been inaudible to anyone else, but he caught my words. “And what if they break me?”

  “Our Lord came to forgive, didn’t He? So you’ll be covered either way.”

  His lips brushed the top of my head, then he just held me for a long, long time.

  ***+***

  23

  THE SILENT CROCODILE

  It was only when I drew away from him of my own accord that he picked up the two halves of his stick, lying unnoticed beside him, and held them out to me. I took them, my heart sinking. Both the long splintered ends were snapped off, one gone completely, the other hanging by a few strands of wood.

  I shot a look at his tense face. No wonder he’d got mad at Jane so easily.

  “Um, this could be… difficult.”

  He sighed and closed his eyes tight.

  “You mean impossible, right?”

  “Um…” I laid the pieces beside one another, this way and that. “Not… quite, but… Well, if I bind them back together, it’s going to be far too short… Perhaps we could replace the missing section with some rulers or something… What happened to it?”

  “Just one of those things,” he said, slightly too casually.

  “What happened? I didn’t do it as I dashed off, did I?”

  “No, no. It wasn’t your fault. It happened in the crush, that’s all. It hardly got knocked at all, it was just so delicate. So it was the boys’ fault, really.”

  “I’m so sorry, Jon.” My insides churned guiltily. Without my stupid custard attack, there wouldn’t have been any crush. He relied on that stick so much. My long eye, he called it. “I’ll fix it if I possibly can, I promise.”

  From then on, as we sat discussing escape plans, my hands were busy with string, rulers, pencils, pieces of card… But I couldn’t get the thing to stay together for more than a few minutes.

  “Margo,” said Jon one day, taking my busy hands and stilling them. “It’s broken and you can’t fix it. Not with a handful of stationery and a ball of string. You need to have your mind on this plan of ours and right now you h
aven’t. I know my way around. I’m fine.”

  “But you don’t know what’s in the way…” I protested, running a gentle hand around the cut over his eye, acquired from the concrete wall after he’d tripped over a mop and bucket the day before. “I’ll figure it out….”

  “We’ve only got time to figure one thing out and it’s not this.”

  He took the pieces of the stick from my lap and walked across the room with a hesitance that twisted a knife inside me, so used to his confident grace. Before I’d realized what he was doing he’d opened the trash hatch and thrown the pieces in. He picked his way back across the room and sat beside me again.

  “There. Now you have no excuse not to concentrate on the plan. So concentrate, damnit!”

  After that sacrifice on Jon’s part, I tried very hard indeed to concentrate, damnit, and two weeks later Jon and I walked down to dinner trying not to look too pleased with ourselves.

  “Now we’re really getting somewhere,” I said under my breath, face close to his. “Keep trying, though. Just because you didn’t immediately pick any holes in that plan…”

  “I know. I’m working on it. ‘Cause I was hoping we’d have things a bit more settled by now.”

  The letter I’d posted that morning suggested the following Monday for my meeting with Bane. That would leave only nine days until the publication day so it wasn’t much time for Bane to make final arrangements.

  “We’ve got almost a week before you meet Bane, though,” Jon was saying, “and I think we have nearly cracked it. There’s still a lot that chance could wreck, but I’m not sure we’re going to be able to avoid that.”

  “No…”

  “Cheer up, Sally, here’s your two lovebirds…” Brandon’s voice broke in on our murmured conversation in a tone of clumsy commiseration. “They normally cheer you up.”

  Nice Sally stood by the cafeteria door, her eyes red and puffy. I drew Jon to a halt in front of her.

  “Sally, what’s the matter?”

  She turned her head away slightly and shook it.

  “Sally, you look really upset,” I persisted. “Has something happened?”

  Brandon followed everyone into the cafeteria and Sally relaxed a little. No longer feeling she had to keep up appearances in front of her colleague, perhaps.

  “Did you hear about Wearmfell factory?” Her voice was choked—tears clearly weren’t far away. My chest tightened in sympathy. Whatever had happened?

  “Wearmfell. Military factory, isn’t it? Just over Wearm Pass?”

  “Military!” sniffed Sally fiercely. “It makes up ration packs for the EuroArmy. Ration packs! Real high-tech weapons systems, don’t you think?”

  “No, of course not. It’s just food, isn’t it?”

  “Just food that happens to be going to the army,” remarked Jon. “Not weapons, no.”

  “Well, tell that to the Resistance! They raided Wearmfell Factory last night. Burnt the whole place down. But before they did that, they…” Tears were spilling down her cheeks now. “They lined up all the guards and shot them. My… my brother was a guard there, see… and he was… he was on shift…” She was crying in earnest now, rather jerkily as she tried to stop herself.

  “Sally, that’s awful!” I’d no need to feign sincerity. “I’m so sorry!”

  Jon just looked grim. Of course, he looked grim a lot of the time now.

  “Ration packs!” sniffed Sally. “He was guarding ration packs! Why him? I keep thinking, why him? I’m here guarding… guarding you, and he’s guarding ration packs, and it’s him who gets… gets…” She wrestled a sodden hankie from her pocket and buried her nose in it.

  “Oh, Sally, they’ll let you go home, won’t they?”

  She sort of nodded and shook her head all at once.

  “Captain said no, Major said yes. But I’m not going. I can’t face his wife—registered partner,” she corrected herself with the reflex of EuroGov employees the Bloc over. “Can’t bear the thought of her looking at me and wondering how it is David’s dead and I’m not. Though I’m guarding reAssignees and he’s guarding—oh!—was guarding ration…” she broke off, sobbing into her dripping hankie until Jon held out a large dry one.

  “Oh, thank you. How can you… how can you be so kind to me?”

  “Your brother’s been murdered! That’s terrible!” I said. “What’s so kind about feeling sorry for you after something like that?”

  “‘Cause… ‘Cause I’m guarding you,” she sniffed.

  “Sally, you told us you took this job because you wanted to make sure we were looked after properly. Seems like you meant it, too. You don’t deserve to be shot any more than your brother did.”

  “But it is a job, y’see... D’rather it’s someone here who’s going to be nice to you poor things, I do mean it, but… it is a job… Oh! David…” She sobbed even harder. I frowned.

  “Look, I can sort of see why you don’t want to go home, but can’t you… you know, stay off shift for a day or two until you feel better?”

  Sally shook her head unequivocally this time.

  “Major said I could go or not go, but if I didn’t go, my shifts were up to the Captain, and she said normal shifts, so it’s normal shifts.” She blew her nose and wiped her face, trying to get herself together. “Look, you two are missing your dinner. Go on in. I’ll be fine. Thank you for… for even caring.”

  “Hard not to care about something like that,” I said.

  She blew her nose again and waved the hankie vaguely at Jon. “I’ll send this to the laundry. Thank you so much.”

  “You’re welcome.” Jon found her arm and touched it gently, then moved with me into the cafeteria. After several more trips and falls, he’d taken to walking with me all the time, though he clearly hated the feeling of dependence. ‘I’d better not break something just now, had I?’ he’d muttered. ‘Since I imagine you’d drag me along regardless.’

  “Bastards!” I fumed, as we sat down with our trays and put our heads together. “Killing factory guards! What the hell good is that supposed to do, you tell me?”

  “None whatsoever,” said Jon grimly. “Bloodthirsty maniacs, the lot of them. No wonder your cousin Mark hates their guts.”

  “I think my cousin Mark was with them once, don’t you?”

  Jon winced.

  “Yeah, I’ve always got that impression too. Knows them far too well and loathes them far too much. Factory guards. Huh. Have they nothing better to do?”

  “Trigger-happy morons!” I shoveled down my dinner with little regard for the taste, such as there was. “If Bane ever actually joins them I’m going to slap him silly!”

  “Bane’s strong, but he’s not hard. They’d make him hard fast enough, but… I’ve always hoped it might stop him joining them in the first place.”

  I sighed, putting down my knife and fork and pushing my plate away.

  “They’d make him hard all right. And then they’d break him. Hard is brittle. Well,” I dropped my voice even further. “If we get out of here, we’ll be off out of the EuroBloc entirely. Get him away from them before it’s too late.”

  “Hear, hear,” said Jon, then added, “though I still think you should leave me here. Especially now.” And ducked.

  “Right!” I called after morning exercise the next day, stepping into the center of the dorm and raising my voice. “Does anyone want to play a game?”

  An impatient noise from Jane, a sigh from Rebecca and a chorus of assent from everyone else.

  “Game, game!” exclaimed Sarah, looking as though Winterfest had come six months early.

  “What game, Margo?” asked Harriet, scarcely any less eager.

  “Well, it’s called the Silent Crocodile. Two people sit in the middle of the room blindfolded, and all the others hold hands in twos and make a crocodile. The crocodile has to snake its way around and around the room and gradually sneak up on the ones in the middle. So it mustn’t make any noise or break up. The pair in the middle of t
he room have to try and point at the crocodile.”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” said Jane scornfully. “That lot are never going to be quiet and stick together! What an absolute waste of time.”

  “I didn’t say it would be an easy game. We’ll just have to practice a lot.”

  Some people were looking rather put off by Jane’s words, so I added, “Let’s play the Silent Crocodile this morning, then I’ll read the next bit of the Fellest Ewe’s diary after afternoon exercise. How’s that?”

  Enthusiasm for the game revived suddenly. Frowning, Jane watched as I started pairing people off, carefully matching each smarter or more practical girl up with a simpler or less practical girl. I put Sarah with Rebecca, and found Jane had come over to join in after all.

  “Hi, Jane. Will you pair with Bethan?” Jane grimaced slightly, but nodded. Then caught my shoulder and leaned in to hiss,

  “Are you planning what I suddenly think you’re planning?”

  “Well, let’s put it this way, I hope you’ll encourage everyone to play this game every day for the next two weeks.”

  Jane’s eyes lit up.

  “That soon?”

  That soon or never. But I didn’t say it. I just smiled, said yes, Sarah could start in the middle with Rebecca, and oversaw all the chairs and tables moved to the side and stacked out of the way.

  The game was as difficult as Jane predicted, but even the best laid plan was likely to dissolve into chaos and I needed to teach everyone to stick together. Sooner or later Jon and I would have to fill everyone in, but it was better left absolutely as late as possible. Innocent tongues could flap just as destructively as malicious ones.

  I did take Rebecca into my confidence as well as Jane, though I said no more than that we were to escape and this was necessary practice for that. But it was enough to make them both help to keep the games going, to encourage lots of laughter every time the crocodile was caught, and to chide anyone who let go of their partner or broke formation.

  We brought Emily into the secret too and she taught the game to the Old Year, drilling them mercilessly. They were not yet at Prime Condition but there were only fourteen of them left.

 

‹ Prev