The Iron Woman

by Ted Hughes

  The rumbling started again. And the voice came again: ‘Do?’ Then again, louder: ‘Do?’ Then, with a roar: ‘DO?’

  And Lucy and Hogarth almost fell over backwards as the Iron Woman, in one terrific heave, got to her feet. Branches were torn off as she rose erect among the cedars. And her arms rose slowly above her head. Her fists clenched and unclenched, shooting her fingers out straight. Then clenched again. She lifted one foot, her knee came up, then:

  BOOM!

  Her foot crashed down. The whole hilltop shook and the sound echoed through her great iron body as if it were a drum. Again, her other foot came up – and down:

  BOOM!

  Ripping the boughs aside, her fists clenching and unclenching, her feet rising and falling, Iron Woman had begun to dance. There in the copse, in a shower of twigs, pine cones, pine needles and small branches, she revolved in her huge stamping dance, in front of the Iron Man whose eyes glowed bright gold. And she sang, in that deep, groaning, thundering voice of hers: ‘Destroy the ignorant ones. Nothing can change them. Destroy them.’

  She went on repeating that over and over, in time to her pounding footfalls, as she turned round and round. Lucy hid her mouth behind her clenched fists. The Iron Woman was terrifying. She was overwhelming. She was tremendous.

  ‘Give them a chance,’ Lucy screamed. ‘Let’s see what they say today. They might have changed already.’

  She just yelled it out at the top of her voice. Her father was one of the ignorant ones, according to the Iron Woman. But it was no good. The giant dancer’s eyes were glowing a dark red. She stamped each foot down as if she wanted to shatter the whole leg.

  ‘Nothing will change. Only their words change. They will never change. Only their words change. Only their words only their words only their words …’

  Then her voice became simply a roar. And now it seemed to Hogarth that inside her roar he could hear the scream, the wailing and the crying of all the creatures, roaring out over the woods. And again he began to see the faces, large, small, tiny – the wide mouths and the terrible eyes of the SCREAM.

  But now the Iron Man was getting up. And he suddenly spoke. His voice was not so loud as the Iron Woman’s, but it was harsher, more piercing.

  ‘I have an idea.’ And he held up his arm.

  The Iron Woman had stopped. Slowly, she lowered her arms, but her eyes, fixed on the Iron Man, glowed red as ever.

  ‘Destroying them is no good,’ he said, in his dry, grating voice. Lucy heard all the cogs in it. They were stiff, because he spoke so rarely. ‘You could not destroy them all,’ he went on. ‘And everything would be rebuilt as before. New factories, the old poisons. New people, the old stupidity. Nothing would be changed.’

  The Iron Woman’s eyes darkened. And down below, close to the ground, the two pairs of human eyes stared up, round as the eyes of two rabbits.

  ‘Listen to me now,’ said the Iron Man.

  But instead of speaking, he took the Iron Woman’s hand, and seemed to listen.

  ‘Just as I thought,’ he said. ‘The scream is terrible. And yet it needs something extra.’

  Then he took the Iron Woman’s other hand with his other hand, so he was holding both her hands in his. All this time he must have been hearing the cry of the creatures through her hands. Now he craned his head backwards and looked up into the sky. Lucy could see that his eyes, too, had become red, and so fierce that a red beam went up from them – quite clear and strong even in the bright morning light.

  For two or three minutes nothing happened.

  ‘What’s he doing now?’ whispered Hogarth.

  But Lucy was looking up at the sky. Only a little patch of blue showed, away to the south. The rest was cloud, but quite bright. An even, crumpled layer. And yet something funny was going on, directly above. It looked like a darker dot, spinning.

  ‘Is that a bird?’ whispered Lucy, pointing up.

  No, it was a small, dark cloud. Already it seemed to have an odd shape. It seemed to be lowering a strange, spinning wisp of itself. A spinning tail of cloud. And the whole cloud seemed to be growing, as it came lower, and lower. It looked like the pictures of a waterspout at sea. But it wasn’t whirling upwards, it was spiralling downwards, worming its way towards them.

  As it came, they heard a faint roar, like the far-off sound of a big aircraft behind the clouds. That is what Hogarth thought it was. But then he realized the sound was coming from that whirling corkscrew of gloom as it descended, louder and louder.

  And now the tip of it was only just above the Iron Woman’s head. There it stayed for a while, like a long spinning top, writhing and roaring. Or like a machine drill about to be lowered. The roar was now stupefying, like the roar of a jet plane as it swings towards the runway for takeoff. Lucy and Hogarth covered their ears. The din was painful.

  And now it seemed they could see something strange in the spinning cone. As if it kept stopping – just for a moment, like a skater spinning on the toe of one skate who stops just for the fraction of a second at each revolution. And just as you get a fleeting but quite clear glimpse of the whirling dancer’s face, in that momentary stop, so now Lucy and Hogarth saw, in the towering tornado cloud, scales.

  Scales!

  Yes, there it was, just a glimpse – then another, and another. Scales!

  But now the most astonishing thing of all happened. That spinning dark column of scales touched the Iron Woman with its drill point. It touched the top of her head.

  Immediately her body seemed to begin to disappear. Actually it began to vibrate. Her body became a blur of vibration. The Iron Man’s hands, which still gripped hers, also disappeared in a blur.

  As she vibrated, that whirling tower of darkness and scales was pouring into the Iron Woman. And as it poured into her, she seemed to grow.

  For minute after minute it went on. More and more darkness came down the spinning cone. The blurred mass of the Iron Woman grew bigger and began to glow blue. And still it went on. Till they saw the upper end of whatever it was lashing about in the sky like a great tail. Still pouring down into the Iron Woman, it was coming to an end.

  The roar grew screechier. Suddenly, with a thin, ripping scream like an express train piling into a tunnel too small for it, that lashing tail dived into the Iron Woman and vanished. The instant silence was shocking.

  Her shape had reappeared, but now twice as big as it had been, and glowing blue, like the glass of a blue lamp. The Iron Man, his arms reaching up, still held her hands. As they watched, she darkened, and as she darkened, she shrank. At last, she was her normal size again and the Iron Man released her.

  ‘Now,’ he said, grinding his voice box, ‘now you have all the power of the Space-Bat-Angel-Dragon, my mighty slave from the depths of the universe. It has packed itself inside you. It has become your power.’

  The Iron Woman did not move. She seemed stunned by what had happened to her. Her eyes were half closed, gazing at the Iron Man who now spoke again:

  ‘Whatever you want to do, you can now probably do it. The power of the Space-Bat-Angel-Dragon is almost infinite. Be careful what you wish for – because now it will come true. Its power,’ said the Iron Man, ‘is unearthly.’

  The Iron Woman laughed softly. She laughed again, more strongly, a rumbling low laugh. She laughed again, louder. Then she turned, abruptly, and gazed out over the woods, towards the town. Lucy could see she had obviously made up her mind about something.

  ‘What will you do?’ she cried. Lucy was thinking of her father, she was suddenly afraid of what the Iron Woman might do to him, along with his workmates.

  The Iron Woman looked down at her. Instead of black, or red, her eyes were now deep, dark, fiery blue. And all her body, it seemed to Lucy, was blacker – so black it seemed almost blue. But the Iron Woman only said: ‘It is almost midday. Go and give your interview. To the television crew. At the gate of the factory.’

  And again she laughed her rumbling, strange laugh that seemed to sink away in
to the earth.

  Lucy and Hogarth set off down the hill.

  Minutes later, they saw the TV vans, the cameras, and the small crowd waiting for them at the factory gate, and their hearts sank. This was going to be difficult.

  ‘Remember the scream,’ said Lucy.

  5

  The interviewer was a beautiful young lady famously known as Primula. Her hair swung about, long, blonde, shining, thick. Her made-up face dazzled like a tropical fish. She was known to be fearless. Politicians and celebrities were afraid of her questions. The crowd stared, seeing her so close and alive. Every second, more people collected.

  She had listened while three men from the factory had given their descriptions of what was happening. And the Manager, Mr Wells, had promised to speak to her later. She felt more and more excited but also more and more uneasy. What exactly was this terrible scream they were all talking about? So far she had managed to avoid being touched by anybody who carried it. But the more she heard about it the less she liked it.

  ‘Here they are now,’ cried the Accounts Clerk, who had been describing to her how, the night before, when he got home, his wife had met him with a kiss – and fainted. And how his little two-year-old son had grabbed at his legs, then fallen screaming to the floor, and then had gone on screaming, because every time his father touched him to comfort him the roar of creatures’ screeches and wails had blasted the child again. And how it had got worse when his wife recovered. The first thing she did was to pick up the screaming child, to comfort it, and then, of course, they both got it again – he from her and she from him. They had all become scream batteries. It was absolutely horrible. And other people were the same.

  Something had to be done about it.

  Listening to this, all Primula could think about was – what was going to happen to her if she too became a scream battery. Her famous baby was only two months old. And her husband was a doctor, touching people all day long. It did not bear thinking about. Television had never shown anything like this, but she wished she’d never come near the place. How was she going to get out of it?

  And now here were the two who began it all. Just a pale little girl and a funny gawky boy. Nevertheless, probably the scream-power in them was terrific. Primula watched them warily as they came nearer. But Lucy and Hogarth were just as wary of Primula. Her red lips stretched like sponge rubber when she smiled. They felt like woodland wild animals when her fine, rich perfume reached them.

  They had made up their minds what to say. No matter what questions they were asked, they were going to tell the TV cameras just what the factory was doing – dumping poisons not only into this river but all over the land, and importing poisonous wastes from other countries to dump somewhere, all ending up in the living creatures of the rivers, the land and the sea. No matter what this tall, glittering insect of a lady was going to ask them, that’s what they were going to tell her camera.

  And those people with their tape recorders from radio, and those journalists from newspapers, all crowding to listen – that’s what they were going to get. And, Lucy had decided, at some point she was going to grab Primula’s arm and give her the full scream.

  Primula was already introducing them to the camera. ‘What are your names?’ she asked, in her famous voice, and her sound recorder held his furry microphone near their faces.

  Lucy began to speak. She didn’t give her name. She knew she had to say everything the Iron Woman wanted her to say. She kept thinking of all those creatures – all those wide-stretched mouths and dreadful eyes. And those creatures in the fiery tunnel of light. Hogarth stood amazed at the stream of words that poured so fiercely from his new friend.

  Primula tried to get in a question. ‘But tell us about those strange screams.’

  Lucy simply ignored her, and at last Primula let her go on. After all, it was quite a sight, watching this little girl in such a fury. And it would all make sense in a minute, when they got to the scream.

  But as she spoke, Lucy had the strangest feeling. She felt as if nobody believed her. It needed something more. Primula was listening, but with a smile on her face. She frowned a little, but mainly she was smiling. Lucy fixed her eyes on that blue sleeve, just above the elbow, and edged a little closer. At that moment a man came pushing through the crowd.

  It was the Company Secretary, the man who had helped the Manager and who had grabbed Hogarth. He looked extremely angry and he was shouting.

  ‘Excuse me, I think you may be talking to the wrong people –’

  Lucy stopped, and Primula turned towards the new voice. As she did so, her eyes widened. The man’s eyes had widened too. In fact, they had become perfectly round. As they watched, his face went dark and his mouth, opening and closing, became enormous. Then he fell to the ground at Primula’s feet. Everybody stepped back as he writhed there, on the concrete, like a gigantic eel. At the same time, everybody saw him slither out through his collar. He actually had become a giant eel! His trousers and jacket lay flat and crumpled. A six-foot-long eel, as thick as a man’s neck, lay squirming, knotting and unknotting, flailing its head this way and that, snapping its jaws which were the size of an Alsatian dog’s – and truly were very like an Alsatian dog’s.

  Right there, in front of their eyes, the Company Secretary had become a giant eel.

  Primula let out a tiny choking cry and collapsed. Her cameraman could not believe his luck. His camera zoomed in on her carefully painted face, with its bluish eyelids closed as if asleep, her hair spread out on the rough old concrete. From there it panned to the gnashing, glaring face of the great eel, only a yard from her. The newsmen’s cameras blazed. One of the journalists held a microphone close to the pointed snout.

  ‘Can you tell us what it feels like –’ he began, in that half-shouting, jerky voice used by interviewers, ‘– aaaaaaaaagh!’ The eel had clamped its jaws over both the microphone and his hand. He tore his bleeding hand free and staggered backwards. Others pulled Primula to her feet and she began to stare around woozily.

  Now the eel, as if it knew exactly what it was doing, writhed on to the grass and away like a snake towards the river. Its tail flipped in the air as it went in.

  The whole thing had taken barely a minute. All the journalists began to jabber at each other. Primula had suddenly recovered and was yelling at her cameraman: ‘Did you get any footage?’

  The cameraman was busy filming the flat, forlorn-looking suit of clothes lying there. He held a long closeup on the empty shoes, one with a fancy red and yellow patterned sock still draped emptily over its side.

  ‘Incredible!’ came the shouts. ‘Unbelievable! What’s going on in this town?’

  Lucy and Hogarth watched it all without a word. They were as astounded as everybody else. But now Lucy suddenly shouted:

  ‘Look what’s coming!’

  *

  While all this had been going on, the Manager, Mr Wells, had been holding a meeting with the owners and manager of an international firm called Global Cleanup. This firm did nothing but transport poisonous wastes from one country to another. Whoever had a problem getting rid of their wastes, Global Cleanup stepped in and did the job. They found all kinds of ways of making the stuff disappear. Some they dumped in far-off countries, where nobody protested. Some they dumped in the sea. Some they dumped in rubbish dumps. Some down old mine shafts. Some in large holes under fields which they simply dug wherever they could persuade a farmer to let them. And some they burned.

  Now they were signing an agreement with Mr Wells. They would pay him £1 per tonne if he would get rid of one million tonnes of special chemical poisonous waste. A million tonnes!

  They were sitting round his desk. He had just signed the agreement and was now staring at the cheque. It was the first time he had ever seen £1,000,000 written on a cheque. A waitress was pouring drinks. After that, it would be lunch in the boardroom. Mr Wells raised his glass of malt whisky.

  ‘Here’s to Global Cleanup,’ he cried.

  �
�To Global Cleanup!’ they chanted in chorus, and with big smiles raised their glasses towards Mr Wells. Then they all put back their heads and drank.

  But as they lowered their glasses and squashed the fiery drink over the back of their tongues, the four men from Global Cleanup saw an impossible thing. They saw Mr Wells’s face go purplish, like a ripe fig. His glass tumbled and rolled over the table, and at the same time he too flopped forward, chest down over the cheque he had been admiring. Four chairs fell over backwards as the men scrambled to their feet. Was Mr Wells having a heart attack? Or a fit? No, this was no longer Mr Wells.

  ‘My God!’ cried the Global Cleanup Sales Chief. ‘It’s a catfish! And what a catfish!’

  All four stared at the broad, blunt, purplish, glistening head sticking out of Mr Wells’s burst white collar. They saw the tiny eyes, which looked like buttons of the same stuff as the skin. And they saw the tentacles writhing round its lips.

  Then it lurched, with a ponderous, coiling fling, and there was the whole fish, still inside Mr Wells’s shirt and jacket, lying across the table. His trousers had fallen off, with his shoes and socks. It slammed its tail down hard and gaped two or three times.

  One of the four panicked and ran straight at the wall which stopped him with a bang. Then he tried to climb the wall, bringing down a long picture of the factory on top of himself.

  At the same time, the other three became aware of screams, shouts, wild commotion in the offices along the corridor. The door clashed open and Mr Wells’s secretary ran in. She was escaping from something. She did not try to explain, she simply screamed. Beyond her, two big sea lions wrestled to get past each other, away down the corridor, bellowing: ‘Woink! Woink!’

  Then the secretary saw the catfish and with a wail collapsed on the floor, where she huddled sobbing.

  The four men dashed out but then halted at the door. Screaming and sobbing secretaries ran in all directions. Junior executives with staring eyes and strange, wild spiky hair shouted at each other. One embraced a writhing sturgeon the size of himself. He was a man with a cool head: