Poppy Day

by Amanda Prowse

He waited until Poppy had finished before starting to laugh, a real belly laugh as though she had told him the funniest joke in the world. He thumped his thigh, trying to regain composure and then wiped at his eyes.

  Poppy felt small and helpless. She was six again, there was no one to look after her and no one cared. She missed Martin more than ever; she wanted to be at home. She wanted them both to be home as though none of this had ever happened, as if he had never been away.

  ‘Oh my goodness. Why do you think that I will listen to you? Why do you think that I will do anything to help someone like you? Why do you think that you can come before me in my own country and make any demand at all?’ He spoke quietly, with menace. Poppy had always associated anger and aggression with loud, violent speech. She now knew that this was not always the case.

  She shook her head in an attempt to clear her thoughts. ‘I don’t know how to answer you. I hadn’t thought about why or how you should help me. I just knew that I couldn’t sit at home and do nothing. I am not one of these girls that can sit by the phone and hope the problem will sort itself out. I am smarter than that, I wanted to take control and I wanted to fix it. I thought if I could get in front of you and tell you that I miss my husband and that I want him to come home, that this mess is nothing to do with us—’

  He interrupted her. ‘You are right, Poppy Day, it is a mess. But don’t be so ignorant as to believe that it is nothing to do with you. It is you that have voted in your government in your democratic society. It is your husband that chose to join an army whose weapons are trained on Afghan families every minute of every day, killing innocent women and children, destroying communities. It is you that live in a society that is sliding into moral decay without looking over its shoulder or pausing for breath. So do not sit there and try to tell me that it is nothing to do with you. It is everything to do with you!’

  Not for the first time in her life, she felt very alone. Poppy didn’t know what to say or do next. She didn’t have to; he was in control, calling all the shots.

  ‘Do you love your husband?’

  The question took her by surprise. ‘Do I love him? Yes, of course I love him! I love him more than anything.’

  ‘More than anything?’

  ‘Yes, more than anything.’

  ‘More than you love yourself?’

  Poppy paused for a moment. Martin was her whole world, the only person who had made her crappy life bearable and without him she had no life. ‘Yes. I love him more than I love myself. I have since I was a little girl.’

  ‘I like that.’ He nodded his approval.

  He stood then and walked around to the front of the desk, as though in deep contemplation. He was wearing a long, pale blue cotton kaftan and black leather slippers. He leant on the desk and folded his arms across his chest. ‘OK. You can take your husband home. You are both free to go.’

  Poppy daren’t trust what she had heard. She sought confirmation, ‘Really?’ She didn’t want to give him the chance to change his mind, but similarly had to be sure that she had understood correctly.

  ‘Yes, really. You are both free to go. I will arrange for a car to take you both to the base that you came from.’

  ‘Is he here then? Is Mart in this building?’

  ‘Yes, he is in here in this building. Only a few walls and a couple of guards separate you right now.’

  ‘Oh my God! I can’t believe it. Can I see him? Can I see him please?’ Poppy felt her tears pooling. She placed her shaking hand over her mouth, unable to hide her absolute joy, relief and happiness. She was overwhelmed, simultaneously beaming and crying. She felt the weight lift from her shoulders, her spirit as light as a feather. Martin was here! She had done it, she was taking him home!

  Poppy dashed away the tears with the sleeve of her sweatshirt, she wanted to be composed. ‘I want to say thank you to you, sir. Thank you so much. This means everything to me, to us. He’s my whole world and he has always looked after me. You have no idea what this means. None at all. I am so grateful to you. Thank you. You have made all my dreams and wishes come true.’

  He spoke slowly, ‘I accept your thanks. You may both go in the morning.’

  ‘In the morning? OK, thank you. Thank you so much.’

  It didn’t strike Poppy as a particularly odd request; she assumed it was a transport issue. She didn’t care; if they were together she could happily spend the night anywhere. My Mart, my love, I’m coming.

  ‘There is one condition. Tonight you spend the night with me and in the morning I return you to your husband and you are both free to go.’

  ‘Spend the night with you?’ Poppy smiled as she spoke, the reality of what he was asking hadn’t sunk in. It wouldn’t sink in; it was too awful to comprehend.

  ‘Yes. You will spend the night with me as my whore and in the morning you will both be free to go. If you refuse, I will rape you and then I will kill you. Then I shall give the order for your husband to be killed. We will show him your body before we cut off his head.’ He was smiling now.

  What Poppy was hearing was so offensive to her senses, so shocking to her ears that her brain refused to accept it. She had to replay his words to try and get them to make sense. He was speaking English, perfect English, but it was as if it were a foreign tongue that she couldn’t grasp. She studied his face, hoping for some sign of reprieve, a hint of flexibility; there was none. He was made of stone; he was indeed the monster she had thought he was.

  She nodded. Fear rendered her unable to speak, or move.

  ‘Good.’ He turned away, preoccupied with some paperwork on his desk.

  That was his final comment, ‘Good’, this one small, mediocre word that sent Poppy’s world spiralling out of control.

  She was taken up to a bedroom, told to wash and wait for Zelgai. She spent the next few hours in the guise of an automaton. Poppy knew that if she thought too much about what was about to happen, she would go mad; not in a metaphorical sense, but she felt quite literally that she could lose her mind.

  She bathed and put on the white nightdress that she had been issued with. The room was sparsely furnished, the bed being the most dominant piece. It was lavishly dressed with a grey silk counterpane and white linen cushions piled high. Poppy tried to lie down, but the pillows smelt greasy, with the tang of male sweat and unwashed hair. It was disgusting. She sat on the mattress with her knees up under her chin and she waited. Poppy didn’t cry or make a noise, she didn’t do anything.

  She thought about Martin, whom she had been told was under the same roof. She thought about her nan. She even thought about her crappy mum. She tried to fill her mind with anything other than what was about to happen. She pictured her body, naked beneath the white linen, deciding to think herself away, mentally escape…

  Poppy was thirteen when she got her first period; it wasn’t the Victorian shock it was for her nan’s generation. She didn’t sit crying in the bathroom with the door locked because she thought she was going to die. She knew exactly what was going on thanks to a small cardboard-bound book handed out by the school nurse. Although, frankly, the cartoon shapes with oversized coloured-in organs in This is Your Body looked nothing like anything on or near her body!

  When Poppy first saw the diagrams at the age of eight, she took a few minutes to look for the large black arrow pointing downwards from her belly button after reading, ‘below is a picture of you.’ She then spent the evening in a state of high agitation, wondering how to broach the subject with her mum that she was in fact one, if not two, large arrows short of being normal.

  Poppy confided in her nan, not so much for guidance, or because she needed the obvious supplies, but rather she wanted to share the news with someone, to mark the rite of passage. Well, she did and she didn’t. It felt embarrassing and important all at the same time.

  Poppy slithered up to her chair. The curtains were drawn, telly on. ‘Nan? I’ve… err…’

  ‘You’ve… err… what?’ Dorothea looked away from the TV as she
stubbed the little rolled-up cigarette into the square pewter ashtray that was permanently on the arm of the chair. It defied science, often teetered, but never actually fell. It was also never washed, the best it could hope for was a quick bang against the inside of the kitchen bin to release the ash, sticky filters, bits of paper and flecks of tobacco that were stuck to its sides with spit. ‘For Gawd’s sake, Poppy Day, whasamatterwivyou?’

  ‘I think I’ve started,’ she mumbled the phrase that she’d heard the girls on the estate use, hoping this would be enough to convey her latest state to her nan. No such luck. Poppy tinged puce to her very tips and sucked her cheeks into her back teeth to stem the tears.

  ‘You think you’ve started what?’

  ‘You know…’

  ‘No, love, I don’t bloody know!’ Dorothea moved her head away from Poppy’s body. The chef on the TV began to reclaim her attention; pulling her into the pixelated vortex in the corner.

  Poppy had to act quickly or lose her to the vacuous rubbish being transmitted. ‘My period, I think I’ve started my period.’ Poppy cringed as she tested out the alien word, a grown-up word heavy with connotation and expectancy.

  Dorothea sprayed laughter over her granddaughter. ‘Jesus, Poppy Day! By the look on your mush, I thought something terrible had happened!’

  ‘It is terrible!’ Poppy wailed, finally unable to curb the hot tears. She wasn’t entirely sure why it was so terrible or why she was crying, but she struggled to find anything positive about it.

  ‘Oh Poppy Day! What you crying for? If you think that’s bad, girl, wait till you have to give birth. It’s like pushing a watermelon through a straw, now that is terrible. Or when you get your heart broken. Or both. These will cause you real pain. You don’t know you’re born, love. It’s just life, it’s just normal!’

  Well great. That made it a whole lot better, knowing that there was far, far worse to come. Poppy still carried the mental image of a watermelon going through a straw; it made her clench every muscle she had. It was easy for her nan to say the words, but it didn’t feel just like life, or just like normal; in fact, it made everything feel different and not good different either.

  ‘Don’t tell Mum, don’t tell anyone.’ It was Poppy’s parting shot and her undoing.

  ‘Why “Don’t tell Mum”?’

  ‘Just because!’

  ‘Just because!’ Dorothea mimicked Poppy’s voice.

  ‘I mean it, Nan.’

  Dorothea squeezed her granddaughter’s hand. ‘What do you think I’m going to do, Poppy Day? Put an advert in the Walthamstow Gazette?’

  It made the little girl laugh; it made her smile, big. Big event over. Or so she thought. Poppy came home from school five days later to find her nan sitting at the little table under the window, doodling her finger on the floral oilcloth and chuckling over a cup of tea.

  ‘What you laughing at?’ Poppy waited for her reply, knowing that it could be a million things; nearly all of them not considered funny by anyone else.

  ‘You know the other day when you said not to tell people about you know what?’

  Poppy reddened. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I got a bit confused. Did you say do put an advert in the Walthamstow Gazette or don’t?’

  Poppy’s mind spun. ‘You didn’t!’ Dorothea didn’t answer immediately. ‘Nan! Nan please tell me you didn’t!’

  Producing the folded paper from under the table, she held it out of her granddaughter’s reach.

  ‘Oh no, Nan! Please no. Oh my God!’ Poppy ran around the table, grabbing at her nan’s arm until she managed to hold it fast and pulled the paper from her grip. A two-inch square had been red-ringed with a felt-tip pen. Her heart beat too fast. Her eyes, sticky with tears, squinted, concentrating on the wording:

  Your nan loves you

  Poppy Day and she

  always will! XXX

  She smiled, knowing that she loved her nan right back and that she always would.

  Poppy swallowed, whispering a missive to Dorothea, ‘Nanny, my nanny, please help me, please…’ It was similar to grieving, her heart felt like it would break, this. This was mixed with the most terrible fear. Her limbs shook and spasmed involuntarily. She couldn’t breathe properly. It was during that period of waiting that Poppy thought that death might be preferable; she was petrified. Had it been only her death, she might have considered it, but it wasn’t, and she couldn’t begin to imagine being responsible for the execution of her beloved husband, her Mart, who was under the same roof as her, just as she had wished, as she had dreamt of.

  As she sat waiting, her blood turned to ice in her veins, her heart slowed to an almost near-death state and she started to count, one… two… three… Poppy counted the seconds that she had remaining. She counted the last seconds of her old life before it was changed forever. She spent the last few moments of being her, the proper her, counting.

  Zelgai entered the room some hours later and initially ignored her. He turned the main light off. The only remaining glow was that which came from under the door and a lamp that shone brightly through the window. The room was bathed with honey-coloured radiance. She watched him move around the room, realising that she had lost a bit of her fear of him. She knew the worst that there could be, or thought she did; there was nothing else for him to threaten her with.

  ‘How do I know that I can trust you? How do I even know that Mart is here?’

  He didn’t respond.

  She spoke quickly, nerves fuelling her speed. ‘I said, how do I know that you will keep your word, because you might not? You might… do what you plan to do, do what we have agreed…’ Poppy couldn’t say the words ‘sleep with’ or ‘have sex with’; it would have made it real and, right up until the moment where she couldn’t deny it any more, it wasn’t real. It was nothing more than a horrible thought. ‘And then you might kill me, you might kill us both, and so I want you to tell me: how do I know that I can trust you?’

  He stroked his neat beard before his mouth twisted open into a smile of sorts. She noticed for the first time that the gap between his front teeth was wide, almost wide enough for a small spare tooth. He pushed the tip of his tongue through the gap until it rested on his top lip; his mouth was wet and open. It made her shudder with revulsion. He scratched at his chin a few more times, as though it was a neglected pet. Then he stopped and popped his tongue back into his mouth. ‘It is simple, Poppy, you cannot.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Poppy knew what it meant but needed to hear the clarification.

  He rubbed his palms together and walked towards the bed. His fingernails were beautiful and longer than most women’s that she knew. He leant back, tilting his head to one side as he breathed out deeply. ‘I think you heard me, Poppy. It’s simple really, you cannot trust me, but you are not stupid, are you? You have told me that already. So I’m sure that you do not trust me; thus proving you are smart, because only the stupid are dumb enough to trust me and most of them are now deceased.’

  Poppy understood loud and clear. For the first time in her life she felt far from smart, how clever had she been to get into this nightmare situation? She prayed then. She prayed to God and to Martin, asking one of them, or both of them, to help her, ‘Please help me, please, please help me.’ Neither of them appeared to be listening at that particular moment.

  ‘Are you scared of me?’

  Poppy nodded, ‘Yes.’

  This made him smile. ‘That is a good thing.’

  Poppy shivered as he walked closer to the bed. She tried to make herself very small. He sat on the edge of the mattress which sagged under his weight, raising his dress slightly to sit down. Poppy could see that he had cotton pyjama-type bottoms on underneath. He leant towards her and as he spoke, she could smell the mint of mouthwash and toothpaste on his breath. It was the way Martin smelt when he got into bed. Her mouth filled with water, she swallowed it quickly. This was no time to be sick.

  ‘I like your name, Poppy. Poppies are my bus
iness.’

  She bit her lip to prevent the words ‘and raping, kidnap and killing’ from tumbling out.

  ‘It suits you much better than Nina Folkstok,’ he laughed.

  ‘How did you know?’ Poppy didn’t know where she found the courage to talk to him. She was shaking with fright.

  ‘My organisation is in touch with Ms Folkstok and that was why she was travelling out here. She is known to us and you are clearly not she.’ The way he emphasised the word ‘clearly’ told Poppy that Nina was superior, better and smarter.

  She stared at him. How could she have known? How could Miles have known? They couldn’t, they didn’t. It was that luck thing again, only this time it was a bad luck thing.

  Without warning, he put his hand out, gently pushing the cotton sleeve up over her wrist. He touched his fingertips against her inner arm, softly he stroked the pale area where the tiny purple rivers of blood forked and meandered under her skin. It was as if he had cut her. She physically jumped backwards, gasping loudly. He withdrew his hand, and she settled slightly. Then he slowly reached forward, putting both of his hands around the tops of her arms.

  Poppy could feel his hands on her, and his beard centimetres from her face. She knew that it would possibly be the last chance that she had to speak; she searched for the words and even though they came out jumbled and confused, she was glad that she spoke, glad that she tried. ‘Is my Mart close by? Is… Is he near me now? I have only ever… only ever Mart, no other man, ever. I… I… can’t… I… My husband… He’s my husband…’

  He spoke so quietly that his words were barely audible; she had to really concentrate to hear. ‘If you say his name, speak again, cry or flinch, I will cut you.’ He then reached into the top of his pyjama bottoms and pulled out a very shiny, silver-coloured knife with an ivory handle. He placed it on the pillow and told her to lie down.

  Poppy couldn’t breathe properly. She could only breathe in shallow pants; unable to get a lung full of air. It was as if he was lying heavily on her chest, crushing the air from her, but he wasn’t, not at that point. It was her very own, personal, made-to-measure torture. Poppy wondered whether he could read her mind, see her fear.