The Paradise Ghetto

by Fergus O'Connell

  Birkita said nothing. She was aghast. Speechless. The bull Roman continued.

  ‘Galena – well, her body isn’t like it used to be. Childbirth takes its toll. But yours? You’ve not had children. And a pretty face, nice shape. I’d really like to see what’s under your clothes.’

  Birkita gripped the knife. When he came down on her she would kill him. There was nothing else for it now. Whatever plans she had, whatever about what might happen to Galena and girls – all of that was irrelevant now. Birkita would take her revenge on the bull Roman in the next few minutes and then she would be gone. Galena would have to decide then what she would do.

  And Birkita understood now that it would be good. She would have done what she came to do. Then, somehow, she might finally be able to throw off the shackles of the past. Then it might be possible to get on with her life – to build some kind of new life – somewhere. Somehow.

  ‘So here’s how it will work,’ the bull Roman continued. ‘You let me fuck you whenever I want and, in return, Galena and her girls get to live. And you know how serious I am about this. You know I have no problem killing children. And you wouldn’t want that on your conscience, now would you?

  ‘So be a good girl now. Put the knife down and open your legs.’

  Julia is crying as she finishes. She is sitting on the bed with Suzanne. Julia realises that Suzanne has been watching her all the time that she was writing this chapter. She has written quickly – she has filled almost two pages and it is still nowhere near lights out. Gently, Suzanne takes the notebook out of Julia’s hands. She looks at her friend. Julia is slumped, feels defeated, beaten down.

  ‘That was what he used to say. That’s what he said that first time. “Be a good girl now.” And then after that. Before he – “Be a good girl.” Always “Be a good girl.” And afterwards. “You’re a good girl. You’re a very good girl.”’

  Suzanne holds her, embraces her, stroking her hair. They stay like this until the lights are turned out.

  39

  Julia hums to herself while they wait in the queue for breakfast.

  ‘You’re very happy this morning,’ says Suzanne.

  ‘It’s the first of May. Didn’t you know?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ says Suzanne in surprise. ‘I hadn’t realised that.’

  Julia nods. ‘Summer,’ she says and indeed it is already warm in the courtyard of the barracks.

  They are given their food and sit side by side on the cobbles, backs against a wall, to eat.

  ‘I knew that it wasn’t my fault,’ says Julia. ‘Last night ... writing that chapter ... I realised that it wasn’t anything I did or didn’t do. It was him.

  ‘Whatever twisted thing was inside him – that’s what caused it. It was him. All him. Completely him.’

  Suzanne has turned her face to Julia and has stopped eating.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know why he came into my life. Why I got a father like that when most other people got normal fathers. I’ll probably never know that. And I don’t know what made him that way. And I don’t know why I deserved that to happen to me. I know that sounds terribly self-pitying.’

  Suzanne shakes her head. ‘No,’ she says softly. ‘It doesn’t at all.’

  ‘But it wasn’t my fault. That’s what matters. It wasn’t my fault. And you know what the really strange thing is?’

  Suzanne’s eyes ask the question. What?

  ‘That if I hadn’t come here ... if I hadn’t met you ... if we hadn’t started writing this damn book’ – Julia smiles as she says this – ‘and if this book hadn’t gone the way it has gone – the plot and everything – if all of that hadn’t happened, then I might never have found this out.’

  She shakes her head slowly. ‘Isn’t that strange? Isn’t that so strange?’

  They have to go to work and it is evening before they get to talk again.

  ‘The funny thing is that I don’t feel any anger towards him now. And I don’t know if that’s because he’s dead. And he can’t have died a happy death. But he’s gone now. Disappeared from the face of the earth. It’s like he was never born. And yes, for a time in my life, he was with me. But now he’s gone. Gone!’

  Chapter Thirty

  The Farm – Family of Five (Suzanne)

  After the first night with the bull Roman in the barn, Galena stopped speaking to Birkita and avoided her as much as she could. At lunchtime, Galena came with her girls to the field. Galena would go to the bull Roman and the girls would bring Birkita’s food. Once or twice Galena did bring the food to Birkita – it looked to her as though the bull Roman had forced Galena to do it. But now there was no conversation. Instead, Galena handed over the food, eyes averted, and walked off. The first time it happened, Birkita was too surprised to say anything. After that, she just accepted it.

  In the evenings Galena had always handed Birkita out her food – sometimes with a smile, sometimes with a wish that she enjoy it. Now it was one of the girls who gave Birkita her bowl – and the two children, who had just been starting to come out of their shyness with her, now avoided her as though she had the plague. Galena did her best not to be out in the yard when Birkita was around.

  The bull Roman was happy. He whistled while he worked and his previous angry mood and peremptory tone in giving orders were gone. Sometimes, he would make remarks to Birkita about things he had done to her in the barn. He often slapped her buttocks or felt her breasts or grabbed her between her legs. Several times, he didn’t wait until nightfall and the barn but took her in the field amongst the crops which were now in the full leafiness of summer.

  It was worse than the lupanar. It was worse than the arena. This was the worst of all.

  Every day, Birkita resolved that she would kill the bull Roman but every day something stopped her. And she knew what that something was – it was a picture in her head of the clearing in the forest and the four crosses. Except this time, the figures on the crosses were Galena, her two daughters, and Birkita herself.

  Birkita told herself that she didn’t fear for her own life. But she wondered just how true that was. She had never feared death before the Romans came. Indeed she had thought that it would be her destiny to die in battle. She had never feared death in the arena. She had felt outrage, of course – outrage that she should die for somebody else’s entertainment – but never fear. But the deaths she had imagined or faced had always been quick, clean ones. A cut from a sword or a spear and then she would find herself on the journey into the lands of the gods.

  Crucifixion was something different. She had been there when her brother and sister-in-law and their girls had died. She had seen how long it took the adults to die. Maybe somewhere, deep inside her, the life that Birkita now led was better than what she might have to endure if she ended up on a cross.

  Nearly a moon passed. The summer started to turn. It was harvest time and they were all in the fields – the bull Roman, Galena, the two girls and Birkita. The bull Roman gave orders, the girls chattered or teased each other or played while they worked, Birkita and Galena worked in a hard silence.

  They had finished a field that was called the North Field. Evening had come and the barn was filled with so many sacks of grain and so many bales of straw that Birkita was hard put to find a spot in which to sleep. She didn’t mind. It was warm enough that she could sleep out under the stars. The bull Roman had gone to Venta to celebrate. Birkita was washing herself in the horse trough in the yard when Galena came out the back door of the farmhouse and came towards her.

  ‘Birkita – you are a warrior, aren’t you?’

  Birkita stood up, surprised, the water draining down her face onto her chest.

  ‘I am. At least I was one time.’

  ‘As was I,’ said Galena. ‘Before I became a mother first of all. And then a mouse.’

  She said the last words bitterly. Birkita looked at her in puzzlement. ‘A mouse?’

  ‘Look at us,’ said Galena. ‘Look at me. This is no way to live. We’re n
ot slaves. We’re not whores. We’re warriors.’

  Birkita wasn’t sure what to say. She half-nodded in agreement.

  ‘I just want you to promise me one thing,’ Galena continued. ‘If we are captured ... each of us must kill one of the girls.’

  Galena’s eyes looked haunted.

  ‘We will agree,’ she said the words slowly, deliberately. ‘You and I – which one we will kill. Then, if it happens ... if we are not able to escape ... if we are taken ... you will kill your chosen one and I will kill the other. My beautiful girls are not going to be raped and tortured for the amusement of Romans.

  ‘Promise me ... Promise me that and we will come with you. We will escape.’

  Chapter Thirty-one

  The Farm – Night (Julia)

  They left under a clear sky full of stars and a waning crescent moon which gave them just enough light to see by. It was a beautiful, late-summer night – still warm after the heat of the day. They travelled light, bringing only food – bread, cheese, smoked meat – tied up in bundles in their cloaks. Because of its weight, they brought no water – they would find streams along the way. They took two short army swords belonging to the bull Roman and the money that he kept in a box under a flagstone. There was quite a bit since he had been paid for some of the crops he had just harvested and sold. Birkita reckoned it would be enough to pay for their passage to Gaul and perhaps see them through the first couple of months of winter – if they were frugal. Galena and Birkita hid the swords in the bundles that they carried slung over their shoulders – the British were forbidden to carry swords.

  Birkita had spent whole nights before their departure agonizing over whether or not to burn the farm. She pictured the bull Roman, coming home drunk, wanting sex and finding all the buildings intact but everybody gone. How would he react? Birkita sensed that his military training would kick in, he would sober up instantly, realise what had happened and come after them. On a horse, the chances were that he would catch up with them quickly.

  Burning the buildings would cause confusion. He would try to save what he could. Birkita would also let the animals loose by opening gates. Hopefully he would try to round those up and that would buy them more time.

  Then there was the question of where they would go – what direction. A few nights before they left, when the bull Roman came to Birkita in the barn, she pretended to be crying. In truth it hadn’t taken much pretending – though she hated for him to see her like this, even if she was faking it.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ he demanded, angrily. ‘You have food in your belly and a roof over your head. So you have to spread your legs once in a while.’

  ‘I was thinking about my home,’ Birkita sobbed. ‘Where we lived. I miss it so much.’

  That was it. That was all she said. Her idea was to try and plant in the bull Roman’s mind the thought that she was homesick. Maybe – just maybe – he might assume that that’s where she had headed. She knew it was a thin enough hope.

  As soon as he had disappeared out of sight on the road to Venta, Birkita ran round and opened all the gates to release the animals. By the time she got back, freed chickens and geese flustered around the farmyard. Galena and the girls stood in the yard with their bundles. Galena may have been a warrior one time but she didn’t look much like one now. Instead she and her girls looked like three lost souls waiting to be given orders.

  ‘The girls know what we’re doing?’ Birkita asked.

  ‘I told them.’

  Birkita squatted down in front of the two girls. They were clearly terrified. She gave them a big smile.

  ‘You know what,’ she said, ‘I’m always mixing you two up. I can never remember which of you is Kelyn and which of you is Sevi.’

  ‘I’m Kelyn,’ said the older of the two.

  ‘And I’m Sevi.’

  Birkita knew who they were only too well. Kelyn was the one that she was to kill if they were caught. In all likelihood, Birkita knew that, if that happened, she would probably have to try and kill both girls. She couldn’t see Galena having the strength to do it. And then she would have to kill Galena. And then herself. She prayed it would not come to that.

  ‘Good, I’ll remember that now,’ Birkita said. ‘So your mother has told you what we’re doing.’

  They nodded, their small faces almost frozen with fear.

  ‘You’ve got to be very brave now but your mother was once a great warrior and so was I. We’ll take care of you. We’re going to go on a long journey and find a beautiful, happy place to live. Would you like that?’

  The two girls looked at her with big round eyes. They nodded again.

  ‘And he’s not coming?’ said Kelyn.

  ‘No, he’s not coming. He’s been cruel to your mum and hurt her very much. So now we’re going to hurt him.’

  ‘He’s a mentula,’ said Kelyn.

  Birkita looked up at Galena. ‘Mentula?’

  The stress etched on Galena’s face broke into a smile.

  ‘Penis,’ she said. ‘Prick.’

  Birkita laughed.

  ‘He is. He’s a big mentula. The biggest mentula of all.’

  Galena set fire to the barn. Meanwhile Birkita carried a couple of bales of straw into the house and set them alight. The barn went up like a torch. The house took a little bit longer but soon it too was on fire, bright yellow and orange flames dancing, framed in the windows and doors. By then the barn was already whooshing like some kind of monstrous animal. They gathered up their bundles, Birkita checked the stars just as the captain had shown her, and they turned south. Venta lay to the east and Birkita’s old home east of that again. She prayed that when the bull Roman returned and set out to find them, as she knew he would, that was the way he would go.

  Her plan was to go south west to Londinium and from there, take a ship to Gaul. Surely there, they would be beyond his reach. As for her revenge, she had taken his family and destroyed much of his property. She felt grimly satisfied. Maybe he would not suffer for the rest of his life as she would have liked, but there were a couple of year’s grief and heartache in that for him. On the great scales of the gods, what she had done hardly registered against his acts – but it was something. And she could always come back again, she thought. Just as he was getting his farm back on its feet. Destroy it all again. That and whatever else he had in his life. That would be something. And then again and again – for as long as he lived. She could keep doing it every few years. She might end up driving him into madness. She smiled at the prospect. That would be revenge indeed.

  They walked until a bar of light appeared on the eastern horizon. By then, the girls looked exhausted and footsore but if they were, they didn’t complain. As the first colour started to return to the black and grey world through which they had been journeying, they took to the woods which bounded the road on either side. Here they found a small stream where they made camp. They lit no fire and ate their cold food. Enveloped in the warmth of summer, it was no hardship. Then they slept, with Galena and Birkita keeping watch alternately. The two girls slept the sleep of the dead. Birkita found it hard to sleep. She was not confident that Galena would be alert enough to danger – and Birkita also enjoyed imagining in detail the bull Roman’s return from Venta.

  She was not sure if he would have smelt the fire first or seen the column of black smoke against the night sky. He would eventually have seen the flames. Then would have come the realisation that they were coming from his own farm. She could picture him running as fast he could, his squat body on thick thighs. He couldn’t run fast and looked foolish on those rare occasions when she had seen him do it.

  She pictured him arriving into the farmyard. He would have known even before he got there. He would have known that this was no accident. And he would have known who was responsible. He might still have expected Galena and her girls to be there. Or he might have thought for a while that they had died in the farmhouse. But when the flames died away and the ashes cooled and he sifted
through the ruins, he would have known then that they had gone too. His anger would have been a wonderful thing to behold.

  They slept by day and travelled by night, meeting almost nobody – just the occasional drunk or tramp. As they walked through the darkness, Birkita strained all her senses in search of danger. She listened for the sound of hoof beats coming from behind but nothing like that came. She wondered if the bull Roman might have got ahead of them and be lying in wait somewhere. But night after night, there were just the sounds of owls and frogs and the occasional cracking of a twig as an animal moved in the undergrowth.

  They reached Londinium on the eighth day, timing their arrival for just after sunrise. It had taken much longer than Birkita’s original journey when she had landed in Britannia but the short summer nights had limited how much they could travel. Anyway, she wasn’t sure the two girls could have done much more walking than they had done. As the four of them moved through the crowded streets of the city towards the port and as Galena and the girls gazed wide-eyed at the buildings and the people and the traffic, Birkita saw that a subtle change had come over her little band.

  Both Kelyn and Sevi, while they were certainly in awe of their surroundings, didn’t give off that air of frightened little rabbits that they had always exuded when they were at the farm. Their permanent nervousness had been replaced by curiosity, even excitement. Sevi even had a bit of a swagger about her as she walked.

  And it was their mother who had undergone the biggest transformation. Galena was several years older than Birkita but she had always seemed younger, more like the bull Roman’s cowed, frightened daughter rather than his woman. Now that was gone. Now Galena walked with a confident stride, her head up, her beauty – those vivid blue eyes and shiny black hair – striking once more. It was like her real self had been hidden before – as if behind a veil. Now it was on display. Birkita was starting to get a sense of the warrior Galena had once been – and might be again.