Ironheart

by Allan Boroughs

  ‘It’s me, India,’ she said in a small voice.

  The door groaned open a crack and three burning torches emerged, wielded by three burly men. Mehmet stood in the middle, holding a black dog that grunted and whimpered on the leash; the other two held shotguns.

  ‘India! What’re you doing out?’ growled Mehmet, glaring at her. ‘It’s an hour past curfew You’ll get yourself shot and I won’t be held responsible.’

  ‘Didn’t Cromerty tell you?’ she said. ‘I got held up. I had a bit of trouble at the well.’

  ‘Trouble?’ The word carried electricity. The men bristled and stroked their guns. ‘What sort of trouble? Did you see anyone out there, India?’

  She gulped. Looking at Mehmet’s red eyes and the grim looks on the faces of his men, she felt suddenly afraid for Verity Brown. ‘No, nothing like that. The lid got stuck, that was all. It just took me awhile to get it free.’

  But Mehmet wasn’t listening. He pushed past her and peered into the gloom. ‘Southsiders was up at Holloway yesterday,’ he said. ‘They took some goats and shot Gab Watling in the leg.’ He stared into the distance and growled. ‘They’re out there again tonight, I can smell ’em.’ He turned to his men. ‘Go and get the rest of the dogs and fan out along the shoreline. We’ll flush them troublemakers out and string them up in the trees.’

  ‘No!’ said India, too quickly. ‘I mean there’s no one there. I’d have seen them if there was, you can see all around here from the well.’ She was further into the lie than she wanted to be but she couldn’t back out now.

  Mehmet studied her for long seconds. ‘All right,’ he said, dismissing her with a jerk of his head. ‘Get home then.’

  Relieved, but still worried for Verity Brown, she pushed her way through the ugly group.

  ‘I hear your mum’s got Mr Clench coming over, again,’ Mehmet shouted after her. The way he paused before he said ‘again’ said everything about what he was thinking. The other men sniggered.

  ‘Roshanne’s not my mum,’ India shouted back over her shoulder.

  She walked quickly down a rutted lane, past the tangled heaps of salvaged steel waiting to be fed into the flaming jaws of the village smelter. The stink of burning rubber made her hold her breath.

  Their cottage was a damp, stone building that stood apart from the others near the edge of the water. Her heart sank as she walked up the path and saw her stepmother standing by the kitchen door, radiating impatience.

  ‘What sort of time do you call this? I’ve been waiting all afternoon for those fish. This dinner won’t cook itself, you know.’ Roshanne Bentley’s untidy smear of red lipstick was coming off on her cigarette. She wore a pair of satin slippers and her best lounging robe. Once richly embroidered, it was now threadbare and faded to a ghost of its former colour. The hem was damp and muddy from the house puddles.

  India pushed past her stepmother and dropped the wet sacking on to the kitchen table. ‘That’s all I could get. The rest were boneheads.’

  Roshanne looked distastefully at the crushed and broken fish inside the damp parcel. ‘Is that it? How am I supposed to feed our guest with that? Where the hell have you been all afternoon?’

  ‘I just went to check on the well,’ she said. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘What, again? Sometimes I think that wretched well is just an excuse for you to sit around on the hillside while I slave away after you and your sister.’

  India snorted at the thought that her stepmother might slave after anyone. Roshanne never emerged from her bedroom before midday and certainly never bothered with anything as mundane as housework.

  ‘Why don’t you just put chemicals in the water like everyone else?’ said Roshanne. ‘Then you might have time to give me a bit more help around here.’

  ‘The chemicals kill off the fish,’ said India wearily.

  Roshanne picked a stray bonehead from the sacking and dropped it outside the back door with a shudder. ‘A good thing too,’ she said. ‘Personally I couldn’t give a stuff about the fish and I’m sure your hole in the ground would still be there if you left it alone for one night. I have to say I’m heartily sick to death of working my fingers to the bone in this ghost town of a village. It’s no way to live for someone with my background.’

  India sighed. Roshanne was not entirely wrong about the emptiness of the village. As the southsider attacks had got worse, so more and more of her friends’ families had moved away. It didn’t help that the few people who were left tended to avoid their house because of Roshanne’s snobbery. India had got used to spending a lot of time on her own.

  ‘It’s tough for everyone,’ she said in a weary voice.

  ‘Not everyone, India.’ Roshanne parked the cigarette in the corner of her mouth and began to sever the heads from the little fish and pull out their insides. ‘Fortunately there are still some people who understand the importance of good breeding.’ A clump of ash fell on the chopping board. ‘At least Mr Clench knows how to live with style.’

  The previous year, Thaddeus Clench had bought the largest house on the north shores and instantly became the subject of great discussion in the village. Some said he’d been a slave farmer in the West Country, while others said he’d made a fortune as a pirate rigger – or that he was a gold prospector who’d once killed a man in cold blood. He had first appeared in their house at her father’s memorial service, when he’d stayed behind after the other guests had left, to ‘comfort the grieving widow’. Then he had put his arm around India, urging her in a beery voice to ‘call me Uncle Thaddeus’. After that he had started to come to dinner regularly in spite of Roshanne’s truly disgusting cooking.

  India dug her hands deep in her trouser pockets and curled her lip. ‘I’m not that hungry tonight. I thought I might just stay in my room.’

  ‘Oh no, young lady!’ Roshanne wagged the knife at her. ‘Mr Clench will arrive in one hour and I need you here.’

  India’s suspicions were aroused. ‘Why do I have to be here?’

  Roshanne rolled her eyes and let out one of her ‘give-me-strength sighs. ‘You might not think it’s important to have influential friends, India, but one day you’ll learn the value of being well connected. When Mr Clench arrives I want you to be well presented so please make an effort. Why don’t you wear a dress for a change?’ Her voice took on an oily tone. ‘You’d look nice in a dress.’

  India wondered if now would be a good time to tell Roshanne about Verity Brown but decided it probably wasn’t. She picked up one of the oil lamps and escaped upstairs. She found her sister Bella sitting on her bed, scribbling in a dog-eared sketchbook.

  ‘What are you drawing?’ asked India.

  ‘Southsiders eating Tonya Solomon.’

  ‘Southsiders don’t eat people.’

  ‘They do too! Levi Sloat said they ate his dad.’

  ‘Levi Sloat’s dad got drunk and fell down his own well.’

  Bella thought this over for a moment and then shrugged. You’re in my room,’ she said.

  India dutifully took a step backwards and watched her from the doorway. ‘What do you think of Mr Clench?’ she asked casually.

  ‘He’s OK, I guess,’ said Bella, without looking up from her scribbling. ‘He talks to me sometimes, when I see him out. What’s for dinner?’

  ‘Sticklebacks,’ said India. ‘It’s all I could get.’

  ‘Stinky sticklebacks?’ Bella wrinkled her nose. ‘Are you sure about that? It smells like roast chicken to me.’

  ‘With roast potatoes?’ said India with a smile. They played this game whenever they were hungry. They played it a lot.

  ‘Yeah, and parsnips and peas and onion gravy.’

  ‘And apple pie and custard?’

  ‘Ice cream!’ said Bella blissfully. ‘Let it be ice cream.’

  They both fell quiet, lost in thoughts of food.

  ‘So what does Mr Clench say to you?’ said India after a while.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Bella, going back to
her drawing. ‘He just asks about Dad’s job and stuff.’ She suddenly brightened. ‘He’s got a cat and it’s going to have kittens. Do you think Roshanne will let me have one when they’re born?’

  India shrugged. ‘I shouldn’t think so. What sort of questions does he ask?’

  ‘I don’t know! Just stuff, that’s all. Mind your own business and get out of my room!’

  India retreated to her own spartan-looking room and frowned at the floral dress Roshanne had laid out on the bed. She wiped her filthy hands on it and balled it up under the mattress. Then she swaggered in front of the mirror with a pencil stuck in the corner of her mouth like a cigar, squinting at her reflection through narrowed eyes. She wondered idly where she might be able to get hold of a pistol and a leather jacket.

  She changed into a fresh work shirt and ran her hands through her thick black hair, pushing it into a set of wild peaks until she was satisfied with the effect. Not wanting to go downstairs, she picked up a picture from the mantelpiece and sat down on the bed. Tall and blue-eyed, John Bentley stood in the centre of a group of tough-looking men in overalls. He had the same half-smile he always wore when he sat in India’s room at bedtime.

  ‘Read me a story,’ she’d say.

  ‘Which one?’ he’d say, teasing.

  ‘You know which one.’

  ‘What, again? OK. Which part would you like me to read?’

  ‘The part when she meets her friends. You know, when they follow the yellow brick road.’

  When he was finished she’d pull the sheets closer as he tucked her in.

  ‘I’d like to have an adventure one day,’ she said. ‘But what would happen if I got trapped in the witch’s castle, like Dorothy?’

  ‘Then I’d come and rescue you,’ he’d say, smoothing her forehead and kissing her goodnight.

  ‘And if you got trapped in a witch’s castle I’d come and rescue you too.’

  India reached instinctively for the small metal pendant inscribed with her name that hung on a leather cord at her throat. Bella seldom wore hers, but for India the little pendant was the last thread that linked her to a happier time.

  A burst of adult laughter from downstairs startled her and she realized she had been daydreaming. She supposed she should put in an appearance and, as if on cue, there was a familiar shriek from the hallway.

  ‘In-di-a! Are you up there? Please come down at once! Mr Clench has arrived.’

  CHAPTER 3

  UNWELCOME VISITORS

  The kitchen was thick with cooking steam that smelled of fish. Mr Clench sat with his back to the door, telling a story while Roshanne and Bella sat in rapt attention. There was an open bottle of home-made wine and a bowl of apples on the table. India looked hungrily at the fruit but thought she would rather starve than eat something Clench had brought with him.

  ‘So the Great Siberian Wastes are a land of opportunity if you’ve got the grit and the gumption for it. I mean, look at me. I was like all the other nobodies around here until I went east.’

  ‘I’d love to see Siberia,’ said Bella, wide-eyed. ‘Will you take me there?’

  Clench snorted with laughter. ‘Good grief, it’s no place for girls! It’s full of wild beasts and primitive savages who’d chew on your bones if they got a chance. Did you know the ice people still believe in magic? They talk to the trees and the mountains, of all things!’ He spotted India and jumped from his seat. ‘India, wonderful to see you again.’

  She ducked to avoid his embrace and moved to the opposite end of the table.

  Clench wore explorer’s clothes, heavy trousers tucked into long brown boots, and a multi-pocketed waistcoat over a checked shirt that failed to conceal his soft stomach. The clothes looked too clean and well pressed to have seen any serious action. He glanced down at India’s shabby work clothes and muddy boots. ‘You look as glamorous as ever, India. What have you been up to?’

  ‘Checking up on that wretched well of hers again,’ said Roshanne, giving him a lipsticky smile. She had applied a great deal more make-up, which now clung to her face in greasy clots.

  ‘Still doing things the old-fashioned way, eh?’ said Clench. ‘I tell you what, I got hold of a cheap barrel of industrial disinfectant the other week from a guy who runs a dredger over in Wembley. He said it was the strongest stuff you can find. I’ll dump it in the well for you tomorrow and you won’t have to touch it again for a week.’

  ‘Why, Thaddeus,’ said Roshanne, ‘that’s very sweet of you.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said India, feeling her face flush. ‘I work hard to keep chemicals out of our well. I don’t want him touching it.’

  ‘Enough now, India,’ said Roshanne, tottering back from the stove. ‘Move out of the way so I can put this saucepan down.’

  Clench grinned smugly while Roshanne slopped runny fish soup and gritty spinach into their bowls. India’s stomach tightened into an angry knot.

  ‘Well, isn’t this lovely!’ said Roshanne, sitting down. ‘I always think there’s nothing nicer than the company of friends and family.’ She gave Clench another syrupy smile, which made India feel quite queasy. She wished Verity Brown and her android would arrive. ‘And now that we’re all here,’ continued Roshanne, ‘Thaddeus and I would like to make a little announcement.’

  India put down her spoon. She had a bad feeling about any announcement that Roshanne and Clench might have to make together.

  ‘As you know, Thaddeus and I have become very close over the last few months.’ She smiled at him and dabbed her eyes with a small handkerchief. ‘Thaddeus has been such a comfort to me in the last year that I have come to think of him almost as a member of our own family.’ India thought she would definitely be sick. ‘And for that reason, we have agreed that we would all benefit from an alliance.’

  India’s senses reached high alert. ‘What sort of alliance?’ she said.

  There was an exchange of glances between the two adults.

  ‘We felt that a joining of our families would be good for all of us. Thaddeus would gain a family and we would have the security and protection of a man – something that we’ve missed so badly during the last year.’ Roshanne took a deep breath. ‘Thaddeus has confided his feelings to me. He has made an offer of marriage and I have accepted.’ She said it quickly, as if in a hurry to get it out.

  Bella gasped. India groaned inwardly. The thought of Roshanne and Clench together was physically repulsive but the prospect of seeing him every morning at the breakfast table where her father used to sit was horrible beyond words.

  ‘Well, what do you think, India?’ said Roshanne.

  None of what India was thinking was repeatable. She anticipated the cold poison she could expect from Roshanne if she objected.

  ‘I think it’s great,’ she said in a flat voice. The lie made her eyes burn.

  Her stepmother blinked at her, surprised. ‘You approve?’

  ‘Yeah, really,’ said India. ‘I hope you’ll both be very happy together.’

  Roshanne looked puzzled and shook her head. ‘Oh no, India, you don’t understand. The proposal of marriage was not for me. It was for you. Thaddeus wishes to marry you – isn’t that exciting?’

  The words felt like a rush of ice through her veins. When she spoke, her voice sounded very small. ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes dear,’ said Roshanne. ‘It’ll be perfect for all of us.’

  ‘But I’m not old enough!’

  ‘Nonsense, you’re only a bit younger than I was when I married for the first time, and look what it did for me.’ She nudged Clench and made a horrible cackling noise. ‘So what do you think about that then, Bella? Your big sister’s going to get married!’

  Bella was confused and looked to India for confirmation. ‘When’s the wedding?’ she said in a whisper.

  ‘How about two weeks from today?’ said Clench, rising from the table. ‘I don’t go in much for long engagements.’ He started to pursue India slowly around the room as India tried to keep the table between
them. ‘Come on, India, try to look a bit more cheerful about it. I’m still in my prime, you know. Here, feel that.’ He tensed a thin bicep and invited India to squeeze it.

  She stared at it as though it was a snake.

  ‘Hey, Bella!’ he said, turning to her sister. ‘When you come to live in my house, how would you like to have a pony?’

  Bella’s eyes opened wide. ‘Really? Could we? A real pony?’

  ‘Absolutely! We’ll find you the best little pony in England, a chestnut perhaps, with white socks. Provided your sister agrees to marry me, that is.’

  They all turned to look expectantly at India.

  ‘Stop it, all of you!’ cried India. ‘It’s disgusting. I’m not going to marry him and you can’t make me.’ Her voice cracked and she wiped her cheeks angrily with her sleeve.

  ‘Well actually, India, I can,’ said Roshanne, her voice suddenly cold. ‘Now that your father’s dead, I’m your legal guardian. Mr Clench and I have agreed on a contract and there’s nothing you can do about it.’

  ‘Missing!’ said India through gritted teeth. ‘He’s missing, not dead.’

  Bella looked from India to her stepmother as her bottom lip trembled. Roshanne rolled her eyes.

  ‘Not this again! How many times, India? He disappeared over a year ago in the middle of Siberia. Face the facts, he’s gone and he’s never coming back. And now it’s time I had some fun and laughter in my life, India! You’re going to marry Mr Clench and we’re going to live in his beautiful house and that’s all there is to it.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Clench with a nasty grin, ‘you’d prefer it if I did things the old-fashioned way, India?’ With deliberate, comic clumsiness he sank to one knee and placed both hands over his heart. He cleared his throat, making his Adam’s apple wobble in his skinny neck. ‘India Bentley,’ he began in a dramatic voice. ‘My heart was like a desert until you came and watered it with your love.’ Roshanne sniggered. ‘Would you do me the honour of consenting to become Mrs India Clench?’ Then he laughed, a long mocking laugh that filled the room, and Roshanne joined in, cackling at what a splendid joke it all was.