The First Book of Calamity Leek

by Paula Lichtarowicz

  ‘Was it nicer than sisters laughing together?’ Mary said.

  Annie was silent.

  ‘Well?’ Nancy said.

  ‘It was different.’

  ‘How different?’

  Annie shrugged. It was a big snaky S she was swirling in there.

  ‘How different, Annie, eh?’

  ‘Just was, Nancy, it just was.’

  And round about then, as we were trying to measure the terrible cooking that had started in our sister, the latrine door opened. Maria Liphook was standing on the step, holding out a fistful of dried roses at Annie.

  ‘Go away,’ Nancy said.

  Maria went.

  Annie stared after Maria a while. She shook her head. All sudden, she snorted. ‘“Mushroom?” he said, and sisters, I laughed till my stomach felt like Nancy had punched it inside out.’

  ‘You’ve told us about the mushrooms, Annie. And we’ve told you they ain’t funny. What happened after?’

  She shrugged. ‘We stopped laughing, and I said, “I need to go now, my sisters are waiting.”

  ‘He said, “Which way are you heading?”

  ‘But I didn’t tell him this.’

  ‘You did well,’ Dorothy said.

  Nancy stamped a fly with her heel.

  ‘I said “Goodbye, then.” He said “Goodbye, then.” Then he looked down at his shoes and said, “Um, I don’t suppose, I mean, will you come back tomorrow? I mean I’ll be here if you do come. Same time, same place. Um, if you fancy it.”

  ‘I said, “Sure.” And he went even redder, and he looked up and smiled quick and looked back down at his shoes, and said, “Well, that’s great then.”

  ‘And that’s it, sisters. That’s him. That’s Sam.’

  Annie had stopped talking and was shrugging her shoulders and smiling.

  I gave her a proper iced stare. ‘But you won’t go back, of course you won’t. You were lucky, Annie, that it was only Charming he did to you. Happen he was warming you up for his Thrusting. Now, who is coming with me to tell Aunty that a demonmale was wandering so close by?’

  Annie jumped up, ‘No!’

  I turned for the door.

  And Annie shoved the sawdust bin so it crashed over.

  And in the choking dust she came at me. With a roar in her throat. With fingers as claws to rip me. Just one inch away, she tore her fingers into her own hair instead. She cried out, ‘No, you will not, Clam, you will not tell no one about this. Please. Please, you will not go for him with blades. He didn’t look Demonic, nothing like. His name is Sam. Sam Matthews.’

  And while I was still crouching from her, she shoved past me, sobbing. I heard the slam of the latrine door, and her sobbing and shouting in the yard for Maria Liphook. Did Maria want to go with her to the orchard to talk to Truly Polperro? Annie had a lot to tell Truly. Annie was off right now.

  My sisters coughed and shook themselves of dust. Eliza sneezed.

  ‘You OK, Clam?’ Nancy said, turned brown as a fat woodlouse. ‘I ain’t never seen Annie taken like that.’

  ‘Mushrooms,’ I said, ‘doing that.’ I shook out my headscarf. ‘Sisters, listen. Happen the only answer is to get Annie locked up safe, and this demonmale sorted – if he is just one. Who’s coming with me to tell Aunty?’

  ‘Wait up, Clam.’ Dorothy brushed dust from where it was stuck to the stains on her smock. ‘I can’t but think this is something curious, isn’t it?’

  ‘A demonmale’s Charm working on Annie so she can’t see the wood from the trees? That is exactly what the Appendix says happens to the weak-minded female when she meets a male. Exactly.’

  Dorothy nodded. ‘Only, I do want to know why there aren’t no injuns out there like there should be. I really do want to know that.’

  ‘Well, we can ask him before we stick him in the throat.’

  ‘Also, I’m thinking there weren’t so many Demonic Indicators, were there, in this Sam?’

  Nancy stamped her heel at a fly and missed. ‘Annie sure didn’t think so.’

  ‘Sam,’ Sandra sighed. ‘Funny word, ain’t it, Sam?’ Like now Annie had swallowed it up, Sandra wanted her taste of it too.

  ‘Well?’ I said. ‘Who’s coming with me?’

  Dorothy pinched her nose. ‘Why doesn’t this feel right?’

  ‘Because it ain’t, Dorothy. Sisters laughing and eating and sitting with demonmales. Nothing ain’t right, Dorothy. And sad to say, it ain’t been right with Annie since Truly died.’

  Dorothy nodded. ‘Still, you know what I think? I think perhaps no one best say nothing to Aunty just yet.’

  ‘But Dorothy—’

  ‘Not yet, Clam, not today. Let’s just watch Annie for today. Aunty’s always saying sleep on things you ain’t sure on, and an answer will pop up in the morning. That’s what I reckon we should do.’

  ‘But Dorothy—’

  ‘As long as Annie is safe, and she will be today. We should cover up the hole to be sure.’

  ‘But Dorothy—’

  ‘Thank you, Clam, we know what you think. What about everyone else?’

  Sandra said, ‘I’ll think whatever you say, Dorothy, long as I go to War first.’

  Eliza was woken up and said she thought she was cold.

  Mary danced her plaits about and sang, ‘Sam Sam Sam.’

  And Nancy, well, Nancy just went off to feed the pigs.

  ‘I’ll keep an eye on Annie,’ Dorothy said. ‘Let’s just watch and see today, Clam, watch and see.’ And blinking and nodding, she went off after our demon-charmed sister into the yard.

  BIRMINGHAM

  I COUNTED OUT fifty rabbits skinned and boned before the door opened up to me.

  Aunty’s eyeball peered out, red and something sticky, like a slug had just slid across on its way to die. ‘What is it now, niece Leek? Can you never leave me alone?’

  I looked down at my toes on the metal balcony. ‘Aunty,’ I said, ‘I’ve come to tell you about Annie and the Wall.’

  See, I had tried to talk to Dorothy, I really had. I tried to talk sense to her after supper, when I found her in the schoolroom with Fantine, Cinderella and Adelaide. They were sat in a bale circle under the light bulb. Dorothy had The Rose Lover’s Digest out and our younger sisters were copying onto boards.

  Straight off, I said it. ‘You said you’d keep a watch on her, Dorothy.’

  ‘Oh hello, Clam.’ Dorothy looked up, blinking, from the sentence she was writing on Fantine’s board. ‘Annie, you mean? Well, where is she?’

  ‘Pulling cartwheels in the yard, Dorothy.’

  ‘I see. Is that bad then?’

  ‘Cartwheels, Dorothy. She’s supposed to be embroidering cushions in the mending room.’

  Dorothy pinched her nose and slipped a smile at Fantine.

  ‘And before that, she was playing chase-the-injun in the yard with Maria. And before that, she was giving Fantine Welshpool here a ride on Tracy Turnblad.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘She was down on today’s duty list for milking Tracy. Milking her, Dorothy. Not riding her. You were supposed to be watching her.’

  ‘Well, thankful you did it for me.’

  ‘Am I the only one who cares to keep the Garden safe, Dorothy? Am I?’

  ‘Look here, Clam. It’s good of you to tell me about Annie, it really is. But, you know—’ she pointed at her board ‘—I am in the middle of a lesson.’

  ‘Like knowing how to write out “The Floribunda prefers a temperate clime” is going to help Cinderella and Adelaide and Fantine when the demonmales have dragged them off to roast on a spit in Bowels.’

  Fantine started to wail. Dorothy didn’t say nothing.

  ‘Well, anyway, I don’t have time to talk,’ I said, spinning about, ‘I just thought you should know, is all.’

  See, I was thinking there might be something set down in the Appendix to help us prepare for this Sam Matthews, something I had forgot. So I hurried on over to the bookshelf, where it sat by the Digests ever
since Aunty said it could stay down here for general reference by clean-fingered sorts only – ‘Aka you, my dearest Calamity Leek’.

  And I reckon I might as well tell you, here was where it all started. Right here, seven years ago, Aunty found me hid under the bottom of these very bookshelves, one night after the bedding-down bing-bong had sounded. ‘We found each other that night,’ Aunty liked to say. ‘Flap-eared, one-eyed love.’

  Course, I had thought to get corrected for being Out of Bounds at bedtime. Especially when there was zipping to finish on fifty cushions. Except Aunty didn’t bring Mr Stick that night – like she often didn’t bother with it back then.

  ‘Yoohoo,’ Aunty had said, her eye boggling at me. She crouched close. ‘What’s up, my little friend?’ She was wearing her night moisturising gloves, and them white fingers beckoned me out of the dust. ‘Shelves are for mices not nieces, darling.’

  Except I couldn’t say I couldn’t get into the dorm for not knowing the right word for opening the door, could I? It was Truly and Annie started it – saying a word which everyone had to whisper down the line at teeth-brushing time. But funny thing was, I must have heard it wrong. Truth be told, right then I couldn’t say much, for crying into the bottom of Aunty’s robe.

  Which was when Aunty took my hand and stood me up. And she looked at me and then she wiped off my face on her robe, and invited me up for tea. And while I had tea in a pink rose cup, she read a story which she said was the first book written about a little girl just like me – a girl called Ophelia, who was also crying. Ophelia was crying because she was going to dance a turn at the ‘Good Shepherd Home’s Yuletide Show!’ on 18th December 1972. Except the shoes she had been lent were too small, and Gennie and Frannie and all the other Shepherd girls who had their own shoes were jumping around her, practising their favourite song – ‘Fifi-Frumps, the dancing lump, a ten-ton truck would make a smaller dump’ – which they reckoned on singing on stage.

  I was very taken with this little Ophelia. By the time she had finished dancing and hadn’t tripped up once, I had forgotten all about my sisters and the silly door.

  Aunty shut up the book. ‘I thought you’d enjoy that.’

  ‘Is there more?’ I said.

  ‘Heavens, yes! I was quite the Pepys of my dorm.’ Aunty sighed and stroked the kitten on the book cover. ‘What a trip down memory lane, that was, niece! We should do it again sometime.’ She reached over and patted my knee. ‘More tea?’

  And simple as that, it started – me having tea in the High Hut, and Aunty’s memories got churning again ‘after a long old drought’.

  ‘We’ll have our own little book group, you and I,’ Aunty had said. ‘And do you know what, niece, I think I am going to nominate you my official aide memoire, I think I am going to do that! Because it’s good to talk, niece, it really is.’

  And now I listened to Dorothy hushing Fantine, and I flicked a silverfish off the back of the Appendix, and without even opening it to the index, I knew what needed doing.

  I left the schoolroom and headed straight up to the High Hut.

  ‘Aunty,’ I said, ‘I want to tell you about Annie and the Wall.’

  The door was open. A thin slice of light dangled about like fat on hanging bacon. ‘Aunty,’ I said, pushing the door, ‘I want to tell you—’

  Except when I went inside, I couldn’t finish my words off.

  See, Aunty wasn’t wearing no more than a brown bra and pink pants. She was drinking medicine, and trying to trap up clothes and hair and teeth inside a suitcase on the bed. Her room was all turfed up, like angry magpies had got in and then got angrier. Toto ran out from under the bed and snapped at me and ran back under. The mirror was smashed on the floor. The television in the corner was dead.

  ‘Are you preparing for War, Aunty?’ I whispered. It was about all I could think to say.

  Aunty turned from her case, swinging the medicine bottle. ‘Who the hell are you? How did you get in here? Did you follow me?’

  ‘Aunty,’ I said, ‘it’s me. It’s Calamity. Your pal.’

  ‘Did you follow me?’

  ‘I didn’t follow you, Aunty.’

  Aunty drank her medicine. Her eye crawled over me.

  ‘It’s Calamity Leek, your niece, Aunty,’ I whispered to my feet.

  ‘That’s ridiculous, girl.’ Aunty swung away and set to slamming down the top of the case, ‘I was brought up in a home. How could I have any nieces?’

  I wanted to ask her if I had said something wrong. But then I didn’t. I thought to ask her if her hands wanted some cream from the pot by the bed. But then I didn’t. My feet wanted to turn and run. But then there was Annie. Annie and the demonmale.

  It was hard work for Aunty to slam up the case. Sweat seeded all over her skull, and she needed a long old drink when she finished. Truth be told, she looked so ill I didn’t want to say about Annie and the demonmale just yet, so I asked her if it was Danny Zuko’s stew making her poorly. Which she didn’t understand. So I asked if she was going to have a holiday from us, which she did sometimes, for the sake of her health.

  Aunty stared at me. ‘What did you say your name was?’

  ‘Calamity Leek.’

  Which Aunty found very funny.

  ‘You named me, Aunty.’

  ‘I did? Well, I never.’ And Aunty found this so funny her belly shook about with laughing, and she fell back on top of the suitcase on the bed, and started up singing, ‘I dreamed a dream in time gone by’. And then she sat up sharp and said, ‘A holiday? You could say that.’

  Which was terrible news, what with everything with Annie happening. And I knew I really had to try to say about it. And I got ready for it. Except all sudden Aunty let off a wail and said look what was about to happen to her, just when she could almost sniff the pampas grass.

  And I whispered, ‘What?’

  And the telephone went ringing on the table by her pillows. And Aunty fell on it.

  ‘Tomorrow morning?’ Aunty gasped. ‘So soon?’ And her hand went to her heart.

  Words came out in one stringy breath –

  ‘What does he want to see?’

  ‘Forgive me, your Ladyship, I know you don’t know, but didn’t you ask?’

  ‘Sorry, your Ladyship, I know it’s a shock for you too.’

  ‘Of course, your Ladyship, I know you didn’t snitch.’

  ‘I’m sorry, your Ladyship, I would never ever imply you did.’

  Aunty had to stop to lick up some pills from a heap on the table by the bed.

  ‘Yes, I am still here. Birmingham, I thought.’

  ‘The burka, of course.’

  ‘Please don’t take him upstairs, whatever you do.’

  ‘Sorry, your Ladyship. I understand how inconveniencing it is for you.’

  ‘Yes, I realise how much you’ve done for me. Yes, I know I’d be nowhere without you. Nowhere at all.’

  ‘Slopping out? I would be, you’re very right.’

  ‘Thank you, your Ladyship. Thank you for everything.’

  ‘Should I call you tonight from the hotel?’

  The phone fell out of Aunty’s hand and hit itself against the table. Aunty fell back on the bed with her medicine bottle in her hand. Some seconds later she was snoring.

  ‘Excuse me, Aunty,’ I whispered near her ear.

  Aunty jumped up. ‘What was that?’ The medicine bottle crashed down on the floor and Aunty shrank from me, like I’d jumped out of the carpet to eat her. ‘What the hell are you doing up here, niece? Don’t you know to knock?’

  ‘Annie St Albans,’ I whispered, my feet starting a twist for the door. ‘Only, Aunty, I really need to tell you – and never mind if you don’t cut the deal with Mother’s eyes – only, Aunty, I really need to tell you—’

  Aunty clapped her hands over her ears and her body stiffened. She started screaming. Worse than a gutted pig it sounded, and it glued my feet to the floor in fear. ‘Get out,’ Aunty screamed. ‘Go, like I should have gone. I
should have gone. The second she started laughing I should have turned and left. Go, go, go.’

  Aunty sagged back sudden boneless against her pillows.

  I grabbed the cream pot from the table and held it out.

  ‘Not that I had anywhere to go. I told her that. “The cops are after me, I am ruined,” I said. “Desperate.”’

  ‘It’s Calamity Leek. It’s your best friend, Aunty. Your pal. Would you like your cream?’

  But she wasn’t listening to me.

  ‘“I have nowhere to go,” I said. “Will you give me shelter?” And you, Genevieve – always the cutesy one, always the Fathers’ favourite, standing at the gates of the home we had all shared, but that was yours now, just yours – you looked at me, disfigured and desperate at your gates, and you laughed. Already full of your plans by then, you looked at my face and you laughed. “One didn’t realise it was Halloween, Frumps,” you said. “You’re looking more grotesque than even I remember.” And I begged you. I got down on my knees and begged you for sanctuary. And at that you stopped laughing, and you looked down at me and then you said, “One might. But it’s going to cost you.”’

  I looked at Aunty. And it was some extraordinary manner of miracle, but her empty socket was dribbling out a tear.

  ‘I’m sorry, Calamity. Forgive me, Calamity.’

  And my feet came unstuck, and I turned and ran out of the room.

  ‘Bing bong,’ went the Communicator on the dorm eaves as we lined up at the standpipe to brush our teeth, stamping our feet, and shivering in the night cold.

  ‘Good evening, nieces,’ the Communicator said. ‘Dear nieces. Goodness, how I love my nieces.’ The words came crawling out weaker than poisoned ants. We stopped our stamping to listen up. ‘But it is no matter now. Dear nieces, proceed at once to your dorm. Take shit, apple and water buckets, and thirty cushion covers from the barn. Shut the door, darlings, and assume stitching positions in your row. Pontefract twins, if you can hear me out west, do ensure the second wind toddlers stay locked in Nursery Cottage tomorrow. I have news. Here it is. Your loving Aunty is popping off for a spot of R and R to complete her sixth manuscript, which I know you are all eagerly awaiting. I shall return to you soon, nieces, I swear it. On my life, I shall – I shall return.’