The First Book of Calamity Leek

by Paula Lichtarowicz

  The cake jumped back out of the tin. ‘Annie St Albans, you say? Now that is interesting, niece.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  Only then I weren’t exactly sure what I was going to say. See, sometimes with me, I ain’t even sure what I’m thinking till the words have sprung out my throat and gone off, that’s just how it is with me. But I tried to think quick because Aunty was winking ‘That is interesting’ at me.

  But the problem was, whatever secret Annie had, well, I’d have to go find Dorothy, most probably, and get it off her. And I weren’t sure Aunty wanted to wait while I did. And I weren’t even sure whether Dorothy would be up for sharing it. Because when I found her hid with Annie and Nancy in the latrines after breakfast, whispering and drawing on boards, seemed they weren’t up for sharing words with no one. Oh no.

  Annie was pinging the prongs on a pitchfork. I looked at the back of her board leaned against the petal bin, and I sniffed. Them drying roses sure were making my eyes water bad.

  ‘You know, I can’t help it if Aunty likes me most, Annie. I really can’t.’

  Her speckled face knit up in a frown. For two seconds she said nothing. Then she looked up and said, ‘Do you think Aunty liked Truly?’

  ‘Why are you asking? Truly was a tragic loss to Aunty, you know that, Annie.’

  ‘But did Aunty like her? Do you think she feels a hole in her belly or an ulcer round her heart, now she’s gone? Do you think she cried for her?’

  ‘What do you mean, Annie? You know Aunty’s eye can’t cry.’

  ‘But does she actually miss her in her heart?’

  ‘I don’t know that, Annie, do I?’

  A pipistrelle dropped off the rafters and cartwheeled over our heads. Annie put the pitchfork in her sack and knotted it. ‘But what do you think, Clam?’

  I sighed. ‘I think you shouldn’t talk like this, Annie, you really shouldn’t. Truly was valuable, Aunty did say that. Valuable as a new top lip. And you can’t get more valuable than that.’

  Annie snorted.

  ‘I don’t see what’s funny about that, I really don’t. Truly’s dying was a tragic waste of her purpose, you know that.’

  Annie looked at me sharp-eyed, ‘Was it?’

  ‘Of course. Like it says in the Appendix, on the first page of the Ps – Everything has a purpose, and my nieces have a very special one! Everything has a purpose, Annie. And we do too. You know that. Even our second-wind sisters know that.’

  But she just shoved a pickaxe in a sack.

  ‘Annie?’

  ‘Everything has a purpose, Clam?’

  ‘All right then, take that axe you’ve got there. What does it do?’

  ‘Everyone knows what an axe does.’

  ‘That ain’t my point. Tell me its purpose, please.’

  ‘Smashing stuff.’

  ‘And that hessian sack?’

  ‘You should be with the Pontefracts teaching the second wind toddlers. A hessian sack holds things. Flour and dried petals, and finished-off cushions.’

  ‘Cushions then, Annie?’

  ‘Make clouds to clog up the sky lid from His heat. Everyone knows that.’

  ‘And what about the petals inside?’

  Annie shrugged.

  ‘They perfume the air in the sky so we ain’t all poisoned by His polluting farts. And what about the writing on the cushions – taunting him with it’s our “Home Sweet Home” not yours – all that is pure purpose. And by the way, you need to protect yourself more from Him. When the clouds are busy elsewhere, you really need to be more careful, Annie. Who’s to say all this hot and bothered talk of yours isn’t your brain heating up from careless exposure?’

  Annie didn’t say nothing.

  The pipistrelle whooshed over our heads and flew back to the rafters.

  Annie folded over the top of the sack and pressed it down tight. ‘So, Truly?’ she said all quiet.

  ‘Truly what?’

  ‘What was her purpose, Clam?’

  I stood up and straightened my smock. ‘It is very late and we are Out of Bounds. We should go back to the yard.’

  ‘What was Truly’s purpose, Clam?’

  It took a moment to pull my voice out of my throat. ‘Well, happen she missed it, Annie. She missed it.’

  Aunty plucked a grey pebble off the T on Truly’s mound. She washed it in her teacup and screwed it in her empty socket. Her cheek scrunched up to hold it in. ‘Annie St Albans, you say, niece? I’m all ears.’

  The cake triangle was sitting out on the rug. A bluebottle was crawling along the top, stopping now and then to have a lick of its legs.

  ‘Annie has been listening to the Wall, Aunty,’ I whispered.

  ‘Now, that is an interesting secret, niece. Most interesting indeed. And where exactly has she been listening?’

  ‘Well, I saw her do it out in the bog, but all around, probably. She’s probably been going listening all round it.’

  Aunty leaned forward and the pebble plopped out of her socket onto the cake. The bluebottle flew off. ‘So, tell me, niece Leek,’ Aunty’s eye fixed on me, ‘what does it say, the Wall?’

  ‘Well, Annie says it don’t say nothing.’

  Aunty kept on looking at me, and her mouth started wobbling this way and that, like she couldn’t choose between joy or sorrow at hearing this, and maybe I could help her choose. But I couldn’t. But never mind, because happen it was joy that came to her, because her teeth spread wide, and her whole body began to wobble with laughter. ‘I reckon Annie is turning into a bit of a lunatic, that’s what I reckon. Asylum Annie – how’s that for a new name for her!’ And Aunty laughed till her top teeth fell on her tongue.

  After she jammed them back in, she handed me my cake slice. Except when she passed it over, happen she had changed her mind, because her voice came sorrowful and her eye turned towards Truly’s mound. ‘I shouldn’t have laughed, niece, that was wrong of me. I don’t mind telling you, Annie’s mental health is a cause of concern. I know she’s grieving, but I’d hate to see her mind get fried like poor Maria, or even worse, her body overheat entirely like Truly Polperro. Dear oh dear, that would be such a waste.’

  Aunty looked so sad, that I felt sad too, thinking on these possibilities for Annie, and I tried to look as sad as is possible when licking off chocolate fingers.

  ‘Napkin, Calamity, please! But I tell you what,’ Aunty was smiling now, ‘I know how we can keep Annie safe.’

  ‘You do, Aunty?’ Because happen I never did with Annie.

  ‘I do, Calamity, and it’s very exciting.’

  ‘It is?’

  There was a crackling in the trees. Toto looked up and snarled.

  Aunty beckoned me. ‘Come up close, Calamity Leek. Closer, pal. Now you ask – quite rightly – how I’m going to keep Annie safe, and the answer is simple. I’m going to borrow a couple of eyes and ears.’

  ‘You are, Aunty?’

  ‘I am. Can you guess where from?’

  I looked down at the rug. ‘I don’t know, Aunty.’

  ‘Oh, I think perhaps you do.’ Aunty’s elbow gave me a jab. ‘I’m going to borrow them from my bestest pal. Can you think who that might be?’

  Well, my heart blushed to hear it.

  ‘And I’m going to cut her a deal. In return – very generously – I’m going to give her the answer to a secret.’

  ‘What secret will it be, Aunty?’

  Aunty laughed loud, ‘Oh cute move, Calamity Leek. Well, as your Mother once made me swear right outside this very Garden Wall, the only secret ever worth its salt is the one you must keep till the end. So think carefully. Go on.’

  Well, there weren’t but one secret a Garden body could ever want.

  ‘Oh, Calamity, I can read that face of yours like a book.’

  ‘You can?’ I whispered.

  ‘It’s your Mother, isn’t it? You would like to know the colour of your Mother’s eyes. Well, don’t look so gobsmacked, niece. It’s a predictable question. One
that I, sadly, never had answered as a child.’ Aunty opened her plastic pot and threw some more pills in her mouth. She swallowed some medicine from the bottle and then she threw out the tea from the cups, and put the cake in its tin inside the hamper. She shook crumbs off the plates onto Truly’s mound. ‘Don’t want the poor dear starving down there, do we?’

  I stared at Aunty locking up her hamper. With everything she already knew about us, I sometimes wondered why she ever needed any more eyes.

  Aunty winked, ‘And we certainly don’t want any more escaping Houdinis, do we? So you keep those eyes peeled, and those ears flapping, Calamity, and we have ourselves a deal. In the meantime, it’s back to the coalface for you and your shit buckets. Off you pop now, and get working off that stodge.’

  Annie had filled two sacks with tools. She was watching me close. ‘You look tired, Clam. You should go back to the dorm and get some sleep.’

  ‘I am tired, Annie, yes, happen I am.’ My voice wobbled. ‘But I came to find you, and tell you the knowledge you missed from the new Appendix page I read out tonight. That’s all. That’s why I’m here.’

  She smiled. ‘Come, sit down with me, Clam.’ And them words curled round me sweet as heating honey. She shook out a sack against the bins next to hers, and patted it. ‘I’m sorry I missed your reading. I bet it was a good one.’

  I blew my nose and sat down. ‘It was.’ The bin was cold against my back. ‘It was a brand-new L. It was about loss, Annie. The Goddess Daughter feeling sorry for our loss of Truly.’

  Annie squeezed me close. ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘Yes it is. And the Goddess Daughter said she was sorry Truly got so nosy, because look where it leads to – page N – nothing but nonsense.’ I blew my nose again. ‘You know, I didn’t choose to be chosen to know all the Appendix.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘No, I didn’t. It ain’t my fault I was chosen. And it ain’t easy, knowing it all and needing to tell your sisters right from wrong. You try it. It ain’t easy being always on your guard for Him, and then missing Him when He came and sneaked nosiness into Truly’s head. Which I did, Annie, I missed Him. And now she’s off burning in Bowels. And there ain’t nothing nice in knowing you missed Him coming.’

  It is a bit of an unpleasant truth, but I was near drowning us both in snot tears. ‘I ain’t stupid, Annie. I can see you packing tools and drawing bricks, and I can see your brow getting all hot and knotted, and I can hear you talking about there being no injuns out there. Which ain’t ever been proven, has it? And all your why and how and what-ing talk means only one thing. All this nosiness in you means only one thing. He’s coming for you, Annie, the signs are clear.’

  Annie rocked us close. ‘Hush now, Clam. I’m safe, I promise.’

  But I shook myself off, and my eyes and nose gushed free. ‘You won’t even tell me why you’re here. How can I help you if you won’t tell me?’

  ‘I’m just sorting out tools for winter is all. I was thinking of Truly and I couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘That’s all you’re doing?’

  ‘That’s all.’

  Well, I cried a bit more and then I blew my nose on a sack end. ‘That’s good, Annie. That’s good.’

  Annie smiled and ripped me another scrap of sack. ‘Truly always said a good cry was worth ten pig suppers.’

  I was about to say, ‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ when something crashed in the far end of the barn and smashed my thoughts to pieces.

  I jumped up. ‘What was that?’

  Annie shrugged. ‘That cat. Or the bats maybe.’

  ‘Bats, Annie!’

  The noise echoed away. ‘We are stuck in the Devil’s own night-time, and something clangs louder than a bucket on concrete, and you shrug and say on bats! I never thought you for being a Liphook fool, but well, Annie. Well.’

  I pointed my torch all about the dark barn. I listened hard. Dead silence now. The sort of silence that comes from sucked-in breath. Shapes were moving in the dark of the supply shelves – bodies, flashing through the shadows. Metal was flashing. I rubbed my eyes and thought the only thing I could. Injuns. Got sneaky through the Wall to kill us off in our sleep. Playing dead with Truly to spring a surprise on us. I looked at Annie to say this terrible news to her, but she had turned away from me. And then a voice came out of the dark.

  ‘Well, hello there, sister Sneak. Enjoy Aunty’s chocolate cake did we, eh?’

  THE WALL

  IT WASN’T AN injun, but Nancy, course, who came stepping out of the darkness, a butching blade in her hand. Dorothy came after, then Mary, Sandra and even sickly Eliza, switching on their torches. Every one of my elder sisters, wrapped in rope and carrying tools. And standing tall behind them, with not one lump of potatoness showing on her face, was our simplebrained eldest sister of all, Maria Liphook. Who was holding an axe.

  Well.

  Well, I looked from Maria along each of my sisters’ faces to Annie, and what words I had died in me. Annie stared at her toes. I looked back to Maria, stood there so bright-eyed and drool-free, I wasn’t sure whether the Goddess Daughter hadn’t just thrown all the pieces of her face up in the air so they landed shifted into someone else.

  I shook my head and shook it again. And my leg bones turned to jellymeat, so as I had to reach behind me to the petal bin and slide down. I whispered the only thing left rattling my head, ‘Maria, you came out without me?’

  And for half the start of a second, it really seemed like this Maria-but-not-Maria’s lips were shaping to answer me, it really did. But then her eyes shifted onto Annie and stayed there.

  Annie shuffled along and squeezed my shoulder. ‘Sorry, Clam,’ she whispered. ‘We didn’t tell you because—’

  ‘Because someone would go and have a sneaky cup of tea with Aunty,’ Nancy said. ‘Or maybe a sneaky slice of cake. Isn’t that right, eh, sister Leek?’

  ‘Golly, is she all right?’ Mary Bootle’s voice said somewhere. ‘She’s turned awful grey.’

  Happen Mary was talking about me. Happen she wasn’t. But I weren’t bothered because I wasn’t looking at her. I was looking at a little woodlouse crawling along my sack edge and I was listening to a hissing noise. Sounded like a kettle was boiling itself up somewhere. Which was funny stuff.

  ‘We should put her head between her knees. Come on, Clam, hush up.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Did she just say something?’

  I tried hard to speak without that kettle drowning me up. ‘What do you mean about the tea?’

  ‘Golly, she really is making ever such a funny noise.’

  I watched that woodlouse come crawling up. I don’t think it was doing the hissing. It was wearing Aunty’s face. ‘Keep ’em flapping,’ it said. ‘Keep ’em flapping.’ It winked and went crawling on past.

  Dorothy’s eyes came close to mine. Hands pressed on my shoulders. ‘Clam, listen to me. You need to calm down. Try breathing into this sack.’

  Where was Nancy?

  ‘WHERE IS NANCY?’ Whatever else she did, Nancy Nunhead told the truth.

  A voice was shouting, ‘What do you mean about the tea, Nancy Nunhead? Tell me what you mean about the sneaky tea, Nancy Nunhead!’

  All sudden, Nancy’s voice was heating up my left ear. ‘Alrighty, Clam, I will. Truly was getting better. And you went for tea with Aunty. And then that afternoon – well, we all know what happened to Truly that afternoon.’

  My belly flipped. Brown sick shot out of my mouth onto my smock.

  And no one said nothing.

  After a bit, I heard myself moan, ‘I loved Truly Polperro.’ I said Nancy’s mouth was crawling with filthy lies and I loved Truly Polperro. ‘I loved Truly.’

  And happen my moans turned to howls, because after a bit Annie said, ‘Hush up, Clam, we know you loved Truly.’

  ‘I can’t keep saying sorry for Jean Valjean forever, Nancy, I really can’t. Like Aunty didn’t already know he was missing. Like Aunty hadn’t said, “Ki
ll off all swinefever piglets at once, before they threaten the whole herd and the sickness mutates to humans, wrecking all your Mother’s plans for War.” Like I was to know Aunty would make you do his slaughter to teach you a lesson for hiding him. Like I was to know that.’

  Nancy spat on the sorry little woodlouse. ‘Nice piece of cake was it?’

  ‘Can I help it if Aunty gives me cake sometimes?’

  No one said nothing.

  ‘It was a piece of cake, Nancy, that’s all it was. And it tasted horrible. Anyway who was spying on me?’

  No one said nothing.

  ‘That ain’t nice. That ain’t sisterly, spying ain’t.’

  ‘You should know,’ Nancy said.

  ‘Am I the only one here who cares to try and keep Annie out of Bowels?’

  Nancy spat on the floor. ‘Like you kept Truly out, eh?’

  No one spoke, and Nancy’s words lay there between us like corpse meat, to swell and burst with flies.

  I wailed that it wasn’t fair, it was hyperthermia, it wasn’t my tea. This was just Nancy speaking nastiness because of that piglet. Everyone knew it was hyperthermia, didn’t they, Annie? Overheating – Aunty said so. And I loved Truly, and Annie knows that, don’t you, Annie?

  And Annie said nothing. Annie said nothing at all.

  After a bit Dorothy blinked and said, ‘Well, never mind all that now. We’ve got to hurry if we’re going to get you through it tonight.’

  ‘Get who through what?’ I said.

  Nancy said, ‘But what are we going to do about her, eh?’

  So Annie said, ‘I expect Clam would like to come with us.’

  ‘Where?’ I said, sniffing up snot and wishing for a voice to come out and answer mine, just this once. ‘Come where?’

  And Annie answered me then, she did. ‘Why, to the Wall, of course.’

  Outside the barn, one brave cloud had flung itself at the Demonmoon. Next door, the stone walls of Nursery Cottage were turned to shadows, the second wind toddlers and third-wind Baby Sainsbury’s safe asleep inside, like I wished I was. I pulled my headscarf low and wrapped my fur tight. Heaven’s lights sparked icy through the holes in the drainage lid. So many up there that not even quick-fingered Truly Polperro could have pinch-measured them all. It was a feet-freezing night.