Only Ever Always

by Penni Russon

  ‘Aint no one ever put Clara in a pocket. Even Andrew let you come and go how you pleased. What’s happened to you, Clara?’

  I stick my chin out. ‘I grew up. I had to.’

  ‘She has grown,’ Ole John tells. ‘Look at her.’

  ‘You grew feared,’ spits Groom.

  ‘I gotta take her back now,’ Ole John clucks. ‘You seen her. It’s done.’

  ‘Wait.’ Groom reaches for me and my heart turns over. I want him to. I want him to take me by the hand and pull me over Boedica’s walls, but I know it would be death to him if I let him take me.

  ‘There’s nowhere for us,’ I say, this time soft. ‘No market or zone or lair that is out of reach of her. Don’t you see?’

  Ole John rocks and groans.

  ‘There’s the river,’ Groom tells. ‘There’s what’s on the other side.’

  ‘Aint no one crossed the river!’ chides Ole John. ‘No, she stays here where it’s safe, where if she never makes trouble it’s safe for all her days.’

  ‘That don’t sound safe,’ Groom tells. ‘You tellin me Boedica won’t grow tired of her? You tellin me Boedica won’t do her no harm?’

  ‘You’re the one wants her to cross the river.’

  Groom wheels on me. ‘You think you’re the only girl Boedica’s collected this way? You think you’re special? She could have hundreds in there, in all them fortified rooms.’

  I step away, and I’m stung. It never occurred to me to think that there might be girls and girls, rooms of them, eating their sweets, brushing their hairs, receiving their attentions from Boedica.

  Ole John takes my arm.

  ‘I’ll wait for you,’ Groom tells. ‘I’ll wait for you outside the walls.’

  ‘They’ll find you!’

  ‘They’ll gut you.’ Ole John’s words is flat, matter of fact.

  ‘It can’t be worse than feelin this,’ Groom tells. ‘I don’t care if they kill me.’

  ‘I care,’ I say. And I do. Unexpected care fills me, bruising my eyes with tears.

  ‘Do you?’ Groom asks. ‘All this time I never knew. Do you?’

  I clamp my mouth. Maybe if he thinks I don’t care he’ll go back to market, back to his silver girl. He’ll be forgetting me and that’s the way Groom lives, even if I am stuck here forever, for the end of my days. The numbness that’s been whorling in me all these long Boedica days is breaking apart, and another darkness is setting in, a grief, so painful and raw that I almost can’t bear it.

  I always cared, I want to tell him. I always split my heart between Andrew and you. Just that, till now, Andrew got the bigger piece. But now Andrew’s gone . . . I stop my tongue. If I tell these things, Groom will risk all for me, and it’s too much.

  ‘The sooner you come, the less I’ll be killed,’ he tells me. ‘If you care, you’ll care about that.’

  ‘That aint fair!’

  ‘Caged birds don’t sing, Clara.’

  ‘But you just want to put me in another kind of cage.’

  ‘I won’t wait too long,’ Groom promises. ‘Not more’n three days. You know I can hide myself that long. If you don’t come, then I’ll disappear, back to market for good. That’s fair.’

  ‘This aint the kinda trouble I invited,’ frets Ole John, jangling a ring of keys. I wonder which is the one that would open the door to let me have my freedom with Groom. ‘I have to take her back.’

  I look at Groom’s mouth when I say goodbye, not at his riverbrown eyes, for fear of drowning in them. I won’t make no vows.

  Ole John leads me on a hasty circuit, so all can claim to have seen me, and then back to my room. Duguld is back, dozing in the vestibule. Ole John leaves me there without a word, but the last grip of his hand on my arm tells me what he’s thinking right enough, and later, when he’s gone, there’s a bruise the size of his thumb to remember by.

  I lean against the wall and touch my lips with my fingers. Ole John is right, I can’t go. ‘Goodbye, Groom,’ I say. ‘Goodbye.’

  That night supper is a pot of soupy rice with sweet peppers, and a ladle and two bowls. The Lady Boedica comes to me. ‘Are you happy here, Clara?’ she asks me, as we chase the last grains round the edges of our bowls.

  I eye her warily. ‘I aint always unhappy.’ I put my bowl down. ‘Are you happy, Lady?’

  She laughs. ‘Oh you are such a treat, my girl. What can I bring you, to make you happier? More books, a songbird in a cage, a puppy? Oh yes, a puppy!’

  I shake my head. ‘I got a dog.’

  ‘You had a dog,’ Boedica snaps. ‘Why do you make it so hard to love you?’ She turns to look at the last of the light filtering in between the wall and the window glass. ‘I could move you,’ she tells, suddenly. ‘You could have a room with a view, right over the Raiders’ town. Then you would feel a part of things, all the time.’

  I shrug. Ever since Groom, the thought has been chipping at me, what is it Boedica wants from me? Is he right? Has she a jumble of girls pigeoned away, room on room on room?

  Her eyes glitter, annoyed. ‘Let me love you. Just name the things that you want.’

  I thought wanting had gone stale in me, that there weren’t things to want no more. But not so. Seeing Groom has loosened the wanting in me, and my tongue prattles: ‘I’d like to go to market sometimes, just to look, not to buy. I’d like to see my old digs, what I shared with Andrew. And I’d like to take some food to Ketch, you have plenty and he’s so little and thin, and maybe with a full up belly he could learn to be brave. I’d like . . . I want . . .’ I don’t know how to ask for Groom, because he aint a thing she can give me. And if he were then he would be prisoner here too. Thinking of Groom being kept inside these walls makes me realise, sharp-breathed, how trapped I really am, how much of myself I have lost in losing my free wanderings, the city I owned once afore, the places I was boss of myself.

  Anyways, the way her face is setting, I know that I have already pushed my luck too far.

  Too late I think, I should have asked for the music box. She’d of got me that. It’s the kind of thing she wants me to want – something to fix me in place, to hold me in the hexery of wanting.

  She snatches my bowl from the floor, clatters the pots back onto the tray. ‘Clara, you ask too much. You are always asking for too much, even when you’re not asking for anything. You want to eat this world whole like an apple, and then you’d just ask for more.’ Boedica stands up, and pulls me roughly to my feet. ‘Come with me. I do have something for you.’ Her lip curls up. ‘A gift.’

  She holds my hand in hers so squeezingly I think my bones will be crushed. She strides through the corridors, from one joined up house to the next. I can barely keep up. I can feel anger and strength in her and I know if I stumble she will drag me, as if I am no weight at all. She takes me down a flight of sharp steps, into the creeping cold. She stops at a large metal door.

  ‘I caught something this morning. We’ve been looking for it a while now, it was garnering too much power. I thought you might like to play with it before we dispose of it.’

  She draws a long bony key from her sleeve, and slides it stiffly in the lock. The door swings open and she pushes me ahead of her.

  I smell meat.

  In the centre of the stone room – stone walls, stone floor – tied to a chair, her arms bound to her side, her mouth gagged, is Dolores. She makes a low growl in her throat when she sees Boedica, but I can see she’s feared. Her puffed up fleshiness is sagging all over. Her eyes are bright and black. Her hair is no longer pinned inside her hat, but streaking down on her face, thick with blood.

  Boedica strides to the chair. She looms over Dolores. ‘Now now,’ she tells. ‘You keep a clean tongue. There are children present.’ She pulls down the gag. Dolores immediately peals off language to skin a cat and Boedica laughs
. She turns to me. ‘I know the two of you are old friends, so I will let you catch up.’

  ‘That aint necessary.’ I take her hand.

  ‘But I insist,’ Boedica smiles grimly, shaking me off, like she would a greasemouse, and I know I’m being punished for something. For not letting her love me. As the metal door swings closed, I gasp for air. It’s foul in here. It smells worse than meat. It smells like death.

  ‘What sort of trouble you got yourself into now?’ Dolores tells.

  I eye her. Even trussed up wing and leg like one of Boedica’s eating hens, I don’t trust her.

  Me being wary pleases her no end. ‘That’s right, you watch for me. I got myself out of worse scrapes than this. I still got ones what owe me, even under her roof.’ She peers critically at me through her swollen eyes. ‘It’s you what’s lost and can’t be found.’

  ‘Because of you! I was all right afore you come along with your rooking and that cursed box. I was for Andrew and Andrew was for me.’

  ‘Because of me? Ungrateful. I gave you everything you wanted. I exhausted myself giving to you.’ She is just like Boedica. Dolores keeps tattling. ‘And look where it got me. All my life I’ve lived for others, never claiming nothing for my own . . .’

  ‘You! With your fistful of names! Owning all them souls.’

  ‘And none of them came but willingly. And who are you to talk? You with your reckless wanting, cracking the world apart!’

  I scowl. ‘I never wanted nothing. Just to keep what was mine.’

  Dolores laughs, liquid burbling in her throat. ‘Oh, not asking for much, is she? Just the sun and the moon and the stars. That’s all! Just the world to rust on its axis, that’s all.’

  ‘It weren’t nothing,’ I say. ‘Just Andrew and Groom. Just to wear my groove between market and home, and to quarry and to mend, to live as we live, that’s all.’

  ‘That’s all. That’s all.’ She lolls in her chair, catching her breath. I walk the walls, looking for some trickery, some hidden handle or key, that will let me out of here and away from her ramblings. Dolores is fading, but her eyes are merciless bright. ‘Listen. You stay here with the Lady. You stay here with her always and she will love you, eat you, sell you, keep you, hate you, forget you all at the same time. She likes what’s precious, adorns her little palace with precious things, don’t she? Until the shine rubs off.’

  ‘I aint precious. Why’d she pick me?’

  Dolores talks to the floor. Her body is expiring, but her tongue flaps in her head as ever. ‘Aint she a collector? Aint she and you the same? Digging through the city for ones what others might want, seeing value in trash, looking inside them broken things and seeing a shining promise? You get that, girl? You’re a crankshank for an electric clock to her.’

  I think on that. I aint nothing so useful to Boedica as a crankshank. If I were useful, she woulda used me by now. I’m a musical globe, an ornament, a bauble. Something to look at, to want, to dangle and keep. But to forget, yes. To get lost in the clutter of all her shining things. I’m special, but I aint more special than all the many special things. I’m a thing of uncertain value, worth only what she thinks I’m worth.

  ‘Want me to loose those ties?’ I watch Dolores’s face leach from purple to pale. I walk over and start to jiggle the knots. If I’m trapped in here with her I can’t have Dolores step out on me, slip down the black river of dreamless, after where Andrew’s gone, leaving behind only the thing.

  Dolores don’t hear nothing but the loose bolts rattling in her brain. ‘But you got her number. You’re playing the Lady’s game. The longer you stay here, meek and mouse, the more she will forget you. She wants you to run. She wants her dogs to fetch you back by the throat. She’s dying to see your colours. But look at you, fading away into nothing. That’s the ticket. That’s the trick. You just vanish here, little miss. You just steal your worth from under her very eyes.’

  Dolores is right. I can actually feel myself being forgotten, left down here to rot like her, I can feel the colour draining outta me. I pound on the door, and shout at the metal which absorbs all sound.

  And she comes for me, my Lady, by and by, and her men Brown and Duguld too. She gags Dolores who is dead or sleeping, and takes me back upstairs, Lady in front and Brown and Duguld behind. We walk past a door just cracking open and I catch a breath, not of Raiders’ Town – which is people and dog and fowl, what they eat, what they excrete – but the sulphur breath of the far off river.

  Run, tells Andrew.

  Run, tells Groom. Now’s your chance.

  I’m out the door and I’m running, even though I know this is what Boedica wants me to do, or why else would that door be jarring open? Dolores cackles in my head, and I’m her thing too. It’s Dolores what put this thought in my head, for her own mystery purpose. Dolores wants me to skedaddle.

  I’m running, but I can’t outrun Boedica, I can’t outrun Dolores; my legs are heavy and stupid and slow. I keep moving, even when I hear dogs at my ankles, even when I hear the shouts of Raiders. Even when they corner me, and I’m surrounded by them and their long-toothed slavering dogs, my heart runs ahead. I look at the sky. I look at the city. I look to the river. From the corner of my eye I think I see Groom, flickering from one building to the next, in the long last light of the dying day. I howl inside for everything, but mostly for Andrew and Groom and for my own dog, lost in the dreaming place, and for me, poor me, in the prison of my own self that I made with my own hands, as good and strong as Boedica done.

  And I think I want to break it apart now. I want to crumble it away and to feel sky.

  No cry passes my lips. I stand in the centre of the Raiders, panting, face down as if I’m beaten, but through my lashes I gaze from one to the other. I feel something in me stretch, something wild, that’s been sleeping.

  Boedica parts the circle of Raiders. The dogs lay down at command, to show their respect. Boedica puts her hand to my throat and tenderly squeezes until my breath chokes inside me. She smiles with the pride of a mother.

  ‘That’s it, my girl. Run run run.’

  I try to break free of her grip, but she holds me all the tighter.

  ‘All I ask, Clara, my belle,’ she murmurs, ‘all I ask, is that you fear me.’ She kisses my forehead, one burning kiss, right where her mark used to be. ‘Fear me and I will love you and care for you all your days and bring you wine and sweet and treasures to occupy you by.’

  She drops me, and I take breaths, but they taste as sour as sick.

  Boedica’s prison is not made of stone walls or rooms or fortifications, but of her want. There is no escaping, unless she desires me to, in order to make a sport of catching me and hauling me back. I glance towards the creeping river territories and I curse Groom for finding me. Since he has been here, I have felt: the closeness of walls, the grief of loss, the flicker of hope – blasted hope – and something warmer and deeper and more mysterious than hope. I curse Dolores, for showing me how complete my prison has become. In fact it is Dolores who has finished it off, once and for good. And she will love you, eat you, sell you, keep you, hate you, forget you all at the same time. Boedica’s fierce kiss brands my skin and a new feeling burns me.

  Fear.

  In the morning Ole John’s merry daughter is watching me. Her name’s Aily, she tells.

  ‘Lady sent me to keep an eye on things. Someone let Lady’s marketeer go.’

  ‘Dolores?’

  ‘It’s a scandal.’

  I almost laugh. Dolores is an inspiration.

  ‘It’s not so funny, Miss,’ Aily tells. ‘Lady’s in a right red rage. Now, I boiled us some grains, and Lady sent along butter and sweet. There’s roasted apple too. You are a lucky pet.’

  I’m being treated special, rewarded for the fear Boedica saw flash in my eyes. I stare numbly at the wall behind Aily. ‘I
aint hungry.’

  Aily spoons a bowlful for me anyway and one for herself.

  ‘Dad says we always got to be thankful for what we get,’ she tells. ‘Cause we don’t know what’s coming next.’ She shovels in a mouthful. ‘You still thinking about leaving?’

  I’m watchful. ‘I aint decided yet.’

  ‘Lady’s not done you harm. Your prison’s more comfortable than most lives.’

  ‘Groom tells caged birds don’t sing.’

  ‘Why, that’s not true.’ Aily’s face is all smiles and bright. ‘We used to have one and she sang her throat pure and golden every day. And if you opened the door she never flew anywhere, she just stayed on her perch and sang.’ She lifts a roast apple onto her spoon, and nibbles at the skin. ‘Are you gonna eat? It’s good.’

  I cut some butter onto my swollen grains and sit back to watch it ooze. ‘What happened to it?’ I ask Aily.

  ‘What happened to what?’

  ‘That songing bird.’

  ‘Oh well, it died. Greya – my sister – went out to feed it and it was lying on its back and its legs were stiff and curling. That’s what she said. I wouldn’t look. Greya knows I don’t have the stomach for dead things, but Greya said Birdie looked peaceful enough, like she were thinking up a new song.’

  I wonder if there’s a girl on the other side of the door for Aily, just like there were for me. Some sleeping girl with her face, and one for Greya, and one for Boedica too. A music box whole for every music box what’s broke in this world. Airy confections, made of sweet and salt, light and dark.

  If I were a dream, I’d just sit here in Boedica’s palace, until I disappeared, like Dolores tells, fading away into nothing. Cause dreams don’t matter. Dreams don’t last.

  Of course they matter, Andrew tells. Even if they don’t last.

  Groom tells: Sometimes they last.

  I aint listening to the two of you.

  I aint clever-clever like Dolores or Duguld and Brown, or seeing like Dolores’s old mum. But there is one thing I do know, tucked away inside myself: hope unstitches you. Hope leaves you open and wounded. Without hope there is no fear, there is just living. Haven’t I learned this very lesson all my life, by not messing with the way things are, by staying close to Andrew and living the same life every day? Aint I an expert at burying hope – grey and greasy and pulsing – under dirt, under stones? Aint I always buried it, every time Groom came calling, wanting us to make a life, we two? Aint I an age-old expert at stopping the flow of feeling, staunching the blood-river of hope and love that threatens to sweep a soul away?