The Poison Garden (2019 Sphere Edition)

by Alex Marwood

  A tap on the door, and the person outside waits until we invite them in. What a world. It’s my aunt, in a long flowered skirt that makes her look a bit like a dinner table. Now that I’m not taken by surprise, now I’m feeling better, I can tell that Eden is right. There’s something about her that’s just nice. A strange, warm contrast to this sad and featureless room. She has a nice smile – real and immediate, not like ours. It’s the smile that reminds me most of Somer, I think, though the way she was frowning on my doorstep yesterday, all uncertainty, was what made me know her instantly. I must practise. It would help us fit in.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ she asks. ‘I thought I’d leave it to these two to wake you up.’

  ‘I’m … ’ I think about it. ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘I think I’m better.’

  Actually, I am. I don’t think I was as not-ill as I thought, even if I did ham it up to get here. That was some beating that man gave me. Still. I gave him more.

  ‘Those are some nasty bruises,’ she says. ‘I had a fair amount of trouble persuading the doctor to leave you here.’

  ‘For a few bruises?’

  ‘You can get a sort of jaundice when the blood reabsorbs,’ she says. Then blushes, rather sweetly, as though she thinks she’s showing off. ‘Or something like that.’

  ‘We don’t do stuff like jaundice,’ I tell her, and see that mystified look Melanie wore a lot. ‘It’s fine. I’m fine.’

  ‘Anyway,’ she says, ‘you stay in bed. Don’t get up. You need to rest. There’ll always be someone about if you need us. We’re all going to have to go in to work tomorrow, but you’re welcome to stay and rest up, and I’ll just be at the other end of the phone.’

  I look at Eden, startled. ‘You work? I didn’t think you were allowed.’

  Sarah laughs, nervously. ‘No, no, sorry. I work at the school where Eden and Ilo go. I work in the office.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  ‘How do you feel? Up to some breakfast?’

  ‘I would sell Ilo for some breakfast,’ I say. Charm. I am all charm. I learned a lot from Lucien.

  She laughs. ‘I’m not sure how much he’d fetch. But you can make her something, can’t you, Ilo? There’s eggs, and bread for toast, and some orange juice,’ and at the thought of all that I am practically weeping.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say, and I mean it.

  ‘Eden and I are going to the supermarket. Is that okay? You’ll be okay with Ilo?’

  My little brother. Five months lost. ‘Of course,’ I say.

  31 | Romy

  When they close the door, he hurls himself on me like a sheepdog looking for bacon.

  ‘Ow!’ I croak, and hug him so hard I think I’ll squeeze his innards out. ‘Fuck’s sake, Ilo, that hurts.’

  I’ve missed him, I’ve missed him so much. He smells of chemical flowers and his skin is six shades paler than it should be. But he’s still Ilo. I can feel those wiry muscles under the layer of softness he’s put on. I can have him back.

  ‘I thought you were dead,’ he says. ‘I did. When we went to the Infirmary. When I saw you. I thought you were dead.’

  ‘Well, I’m not. I’m like the cockroaches. When the world ends, I’ll still be here and you can eat me.’ And we both laugh, because Uri once tried to start a rule that we all had to eat insects once a week, and cockroaches featured high on his list, termites being in short supply in north Wales. Even the force of Uri’s will wasn’t enough to make people co-operate with that one.

  ‘What the fuck happened to Eden’s medallion?’ I ask.

  He colours. ‘I’m sorry. It’s this stupid girl at school. She snatched it off her neck on Friday, and she’s got these friends, and when I tried to take it back they were all, like, throwing it over my head, and then one of the teachers came along and chased us off and her father turned up in his big car, and … ’

  ‘We need it, Ilo. She’s worth absolutely nothing without that medallion.’

  ‘Yes, she is! She’s still Eden! Come on!’

  No, you’re right, Ilo. She’s worth nothing to me without it. Or I’m worth nothing to Uri. Without it, she could be just anyone.

  ‘Who is this girl?’ I ask.

  ‘She’s a … she’s stupid. She’s called Marie. Her hair’s made of plastic and so are her fingernails, and she swanks around the place like she’s the One, and they’re all so ignorant, they follow her around like sheepdogs. And she hates Eden because she won’t bow down to her. It’s horrible. I don’t like school. Romy, can we go? Can you take us away?’

  ‘It’s not as easy as that. I can’t just kidnap you.’

  ‘But you’re our sister.’

  ‘And now Aunt Sarah’s your legal guardian. I can’t just take you away.’

  ‘I thought that was only because they couldn’t find you,’ he says. ‘You’re back now!’

  ‘No. They knew where I was. But I don’t count as a responsible adult, apparently. There are laws.’

  ‘We’re not subject to their laws,’ he says, confidently.

  ‘We are now. They’d come after us.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘And anyway, she seems kind.’

  ‘I think she is. But she hasn’t got the first idea. She’s made no preparations. Literally none. We’ve tried telling her and it’s like talking to a brick wall. How are we going to survive?’

  ‘I’m working on it.’

  ‘And you’re pregnant. Like a football.’

  ‘Good observational skills. I taught you those.’

  ‘What would Somer have thought?’

  ‘She knew. I told her.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘She wasn’t thrilled.’

  ‘Oh,’ he says again, then, ‘bit hypocritical.’

  I shrug.

  ‘I won’t hold it against you, though.’

  Too right, you literal little bastard. You’re the last person in the world who should. ‘Thank you,’ I say.

  ‘Whose is it?’

  I shake my head. ‘It doesn’t matter. He’s dead.’

  ‘Aren’t you scared, R? I mean, it doesn’t matter how nice Aunt Sarah is, does it? I’m literally scared all the time. Do you watch the news? She puts on the television at six o’clock every night, and it’s nothing but people screaming at each other and people getting blown up and volcanoes and burning buildings. And she doesn’t seem to see it at all. She watches it like it’s some sort of entertainment. They’re all going to be turning on each other soon. How can she not see it? Imagine when they all come pouring out of London … ’

  I put a hand on his shoulder. He’s such a kid. I’d forgotten. ‘I know,’ I say. ‘I do.’

  ‘But what do we do?’

  ‘Keep your pack packed. Be ready, always. If we can’t get her to understand before it’s too late, we’ll have to leave her behind.’

  ‘And go where?’

  ‘Cairngorm. They’re there. Uri and the rest. That’s where they went.’

  He drinks this in. I guess they didn’t tell him everything, in the Guard House. He’d only been there a little while. He’s only young.

  ‘And how are we going to do that?’ he asks.

  I tell him. Well, not all of it. Not yet. Give him a chance to get used to the easy bits first. He’s not stupid. He’ll work it out.

  Before the End

  2012–2014

  32 | Romy

  June 2012

  On the other side of the hill pass, a silvery-black lake reflects the sky, nestled in the heather. Every year, the morning after the summer solstice, when the party is over and the children have been released from their confinement in the Pigshed, the women carry the remainder of the solstice feast up into the hills to eat on the heather and enjoy the bitter mountain waters. Their moment of liberty, if just for the morning. Lucien doesn’t like mixed bathing. For the moment, for the rest of the morning, they can do what they want, but they must be back in their clothes, modesty recovered, by the time the men come up after clearing the co
urtyard to share the meal.

  Eilidh throws herself down in the heather and Romy drops down beside her. All around them, women are stripping off their dresses, exposing pale bodies to the air. The Plas Golau suntan: brown faces, scalps, forearms and upper feet, and sharp lines of demarcation with the white beneath. Romy, with her olive complexion, feels conspicuous in the women’s Bath House, when she finds herself surrounded by all this ivory skin. She never really wonders who her father was, for his part of her story most likely ended with ejaculation, but she does wish, sometimes, that he’d been a normal blond like everyone else in the world. Eilidh is so white she feels concerned for her, for the dangers from the mountain sun.

  ‘This is the life, eh?’ says Eilidh.

  Romy strips off her top and rolls onto her back, arches her spine. Is there any bed more comfortable than a blanket laid over the natural bounce of living heather? She can’t help scanning the bodies of the three female Guards. In this gathering of rib and hipbone and breasts that have lost their stuffing till they dangle from chests as though they don’t quite belong there, Fitz and Ash and Willow are lionesses. Muscles that ripple in their arms, thighs and bellies hard as granite. Their skin is smooth and lustrous, for Uri insists that they bathe daily and oil themselves afterwards, to protect against infection and the elements. Romy rolls onto her belly. I might get dressed in a bit, she thinks. For, although she’s rougher round the edges, she feels slightly nervous that someone might notice that she looks more Guard than Drone.

  Down the slope, Vita, magnificent in an emerald-green swimsuit, her silver hair tumbling down to her waist, leads the charge into the water. Her mother, freed from the Dung Squad for the day, joins in for all the world as though she belongs there, whooping with shock as she runs into the mountain-cold water in her underwear, looking younger than Romy has seen her look in years. She’s hand in hand with Eden, laughing. Eden’s still fond of her, despite it all. She may be part of the Family, but she never forgets who her mother is.

  ‘You not going in?’ Romy asks.

  Eilidh shivers. ‘Maybe once I’ve got myself nice and hot.’ She fingers her medallion as she watches the other women. ‘It’s pretty cold in there.’

  ‘I guess it’ll clear their hangovers,’ says Romy.

  Eilidh laughs. ‘Is that why they do it?’

  ‘I heard,’ says Romy, ‘that you can drink as much as you want.’

  Eilidh’s eyes grow wide. So many things you want, at sixteen. ‘Really? D’you think Kiran … ?’ Their old friend Kiran passed into full adulthood last night, and they’re burning to hear his account of his first solstice party. It sounds so wild, through the Pigshed walls. The drumbeat so arousing, the cries of the women sounding, if they didn’t know better, for all the world as if they’re in pain.

  ‘I should think so. Wouldn’t you? Anyway, I guess we’ll see soon enough. And there’s food and food and food. No portions. They killed two pigs and three sheep last week, you know.’

  ‘Waah,’ says Eilidh.

  When Lucien comes, astride his big black horse and leading his men, they’ve long since left the water. It’s a beautiful thing about him, thinks Romy, that he still loves that horse despite the fact that it nearly killed him. Our Father is so kind. He forgives everything. Then she sees Kiran, skin grey and shadows under his eyes, and she waves and nudges Eilidh.

  ‘There he is,’ she says.

  Eilidh looks, wrinkles her nose. ‘Is there really any fun so good it’s worth feeling like that for the picnic?’ she asks.

  Fitz and Ash, altered and eerie in feminine garb, come over to join them on their blanket, chat amiably as though they were equals. They respond to the girls’ attempts to pump them about the night by smiling and laughing and turning away. You’ll see soon enough, they say. And yeah, we had a good time. You think this picnic is good, but there’s so much food you don’t know where to start.

  ‘Some people don’t know where to stop, either,’ says Ash, and Fitz laughs. Out of her green fatigues, Fitz is pretty. Smooth golden skin and a smattering of freckles, eyes as blue as robins’ eggs. Perhaps it’s the change in her expression. Around the Guard House she mostly wears a slightly feral frown, as though she feels that to be a Guard she needs to be on her guard all the time. Out here with the women, her face is relaxed, the brow no longer knitted, the corners of her lips turned upwards.

  ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Too right.’

  ‘Did anyone get drunk?’ asks Romy. Some of the women are quiet today. Slow-moving. And they’re drinking deeply from the elderflower cordial in the flagons, diluted with water from the lake.

  ‘Not us,’ says Ash.

  ‘No,’ says Fitz. ‘We’ve got more sense.’

  The men reach the water and start to strip. Romy wonders passingly why it is that the men can show their skin in front of the women without kicking off a frenzy of lust. It’s just always been that way. But she looks anyway, for she’s not seen Kiran without his top since last year. He’s grown up fine, his body slim and muscular from his work in the smithy. She’s surprised to realise that she’s enjoying the view.

  She turns away. ‘Is there dancing?’ she asks.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ says Fitz. ‘There’s dancing.’

  Lucien joins them at four o’clock. They’ve moved into a circle, the older teens, the younger twenties. People who’ve grown up together, old comrades from the Pigshed, flirting and fooling, for all the world as though they have no duties.

  He’s been attracted by the laughter, she realises, as he gets up and walks towards them. He’s been glancing over every time they’ve guffawed. He’s so familiar, and yet so not. A presence who moves among them every day, guiding, but aloof, retiring early to his quarters, for Vita says his burden is heavy and he has to think late into the night. He is never like this – one of them – apart from today. It’s part of the magic of the longest hours. It must be hard for him, she thinks. To have to be the Leader. He must be very alone.

  He looks Romy straight in the eye and asks if he can sit, just like a normal person, just like a human being. And Romy gets goosebumps, but she plays the game and moves casually aside to make room for him just like he’s one of them. He drops from standing straight into the lotus position, and smiles at them all in turn.

  Lucien is sixty-two. His hair has gone white and his neatly trimmed beard to match. His body is still lean, though a little old-man paunch is just faintly visible beneath his tunic. His teeth, she sees, are snaggled, and eyes that she remembers from her ceremony as bright blue have faded to a blueish grey. A face surprisingly unlined, but for the creases around his eyes when he smiles. If it weren’t Lucien, if she didn’t know how deep and great his deliberations, she might well have assumed that the smoothness indicated a mind untroubled by thinking. But he is, and he’s here among them, and they’re all trying to hide their excitement, to pretend that this is an event that happens every day.

  ‘What are you all up to?’ he asks.

  Someone has to speak. Come on, someone. Romy looks at her companions beneath her eyelashes. The longer the pause, the more awkward we make it, the higher the barrier we put between him and us. She glances at Eilidh. He’s your father, she projects at her. You at least should be able to talk.

  And then she’s speaking, because she’s realised that everyone else is more tongue-tied than she is, and he’s smiling at her and nodding, as though every word she has to say is interesting.

  ‘It’s just a silly game.’

  The blue-grey eyes continue to rest on her, and she’s drowning. They may have faded, but still they are clear and piercing. From a distance, you feel as though they can see right into your soul.

  And then she’s cold all over, because she’s realised that, when you see them close up, there is nothing behind them.

  ‘We … ’ she stammers ‘ … just Simon Says.’

  ‘Oh, that old game,’ he replies, and helps himself to a handful of berries from the bowl they’ve hived away for themsel
ves. Trickles them between his lips and holds her eyes with his.

  There’s nothing there. Nothing. He’s as empty as a prayer bowl. The heat has gone out of the sun.

  ‘So did you all have a good time last night?’ he asks.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Fitz, ‘it was good.’

  ‘It was great,’ says Kiran. ‘Not that I’ve anything to compare it with.’

  Lucien ignores him. Looks again at Romy. ‘And you?’ he asks. ‘It must have been your first time?’

  She finds her voice, though it’s small with shock. How can this be? How can we follow him, when there’s nothing there?

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘Next year. And not till winter.’

  A little tic of a frown. ‘Next year? How old are you? I thought you came of age this year?’

  ‘Next November,’ she tells him.

  ‘Ah, still,’ he says. ‘Not long till you’re ready.’

  33 | Romy

  December 2013

  She’s preparing to leave the Bath House when Somer grabs her by the wrist. ‘Listen,’ she says. ‘Stay in the light.’

  Romy stops. ‘What?’ she asks. She feels uncomfortably unconstructed in her long, loose dress. It’s the first time she’s worn it since her maturity rite four years ago, and it’s no more comfortable now than it was then. It has had to be let out at the shoulders, for she’s taller and broader by several inches.

  Her mother seems to have shrunk again, her daily humbling showing literally in her stooping shoulders. If that’s what thirty-five looks like, thinks Romy with all the certainty of godlike eighteen, I would rather die in battle. And then she feels a wash of guilt, for this is the woman who bore her, nursed her, brought her here to safety, and drops back.

  ‘Tonight,’ says Somer. ‘You’ve not been before.’

  ‘I know that.’ She’s trying to look cool as a vixen, but inside she prickles with nervous excitement. Eighteen, and never been to a party. Tonight is the night. All the abandon she’s heard through the Pigshed walls all these years – this time she’ll be part of it.

  ‘Listen to me, Romy,’ says Somer. ‘This is important.’