The First Book of Calamity Leek

by Paula Lichtarowicz

  But Nancy couldn’t move her mouth. Her eyes were stuck open like dead pig ones. I felt my own heart frost up with fear.

  Down the row, Eliza Aberdeen sneezed. And a pig snorted back at her.

  ‘Pigs!’ Mother cried out. ‘One meant pigs not cows! One keeps the pork stock in there. Gloucester Old Spot. Tamworth. British White. Adorable creatures, one hundred per cent organic. Fresh meat gives such a boost to the orphans’ diet. Would you care for a chop, Inspector?’

  The demonmale said nothing.

  A terrible thought came to me. What if Mother hasn’t got a knife on her? What if that’s why he’s running free? I tugged Nancy’s smock. ‘What’s happening? Why ain’t he been stuck? Why ain’t anyone speaking out there? Is Mother safe?’

  Nancy unfroze her mouth. ‘He’s looking along the dorm wall,’ she mouthed. ‘He’s looking at the door. He’s looking up and down and everywhere.’

  In case I hadn’t been doing it already, I held my breath.

  ‘Awfully nippy,’ Mother said. ‘This time of year.’

  The demonmale said nothing.

  ‘How do you manage without a decent overcoat, one wonders,’ Mother said. ‘Or are you one of these terribly macho types?’

  The demonmale said he doubted it.

  Mother said she was sure he was being modest. He looked terribly strong to her. Young and terribly, terribly strong. Did he work out at all?

  The demonmale said nothing.

  Mother said his wife was clearly a lucky lady. Very, very lucky.

  The demonmale said nothing.

  Mother wheeled close and grabbed his trouser leg. ‘If one was only a younger and healthier woman, Inspector.’

  The demonmale moved off.

  ‘Still looking,’ Nancy mouthed down to me.

  And silly to say it, I flung some straw over my head, just in case. But I needn’t have bothered, because – thank heavens – his left shoe swivelled away. He began to move towards the corner of the yard, and the steps to the High Hut.

  ‘Derelict accommodation,’ Mother said, her chair screeching to life and speeding after him. ‘For the farm hands. No one’s lived up there for decades. Condemned. Rather more than one’s life’s worth to take on the Council. But be one’s guest, Inspector. If you’ve got the Council’s say-so, and all the appropriate health and safety forms, then do be one’s guest.’

  Up in the High Hut, Toto must have heard him coming because she started yapping. About the only thing that fleabag dog ever did right in her life. And Mother’s voice set to hissing laughter, ‘One does beg your pardon, Inspector. One should have said no one except for the orphans’ pet lives up there. But that thing’s old enough to have been condemned ten times over.’

  The demonmale shoes stopped by the metal steps. The right shoe shifted up onto the bottom one. ‘Would you mind if I—’

  But Mother screeched her chair around and started it racing for the yard gate. ‘Would you care for a cafetière, Inspector?’ she shouted out. ‘One’s autoimmunity plummets these days, if one’s outside for long.’

  The demonmale shoe hovered. All slow, it swung round and came down on yard concrete. ‘Yes, of course, Lady Llewelyn. You’ve been most accommodating as it is.’

  And that’s how Mother got that demonmale shutting up with his nosying and trotting out of the yard, happy as a pig following a bucket to his slaughter.

  I took Nancy’s hand and squeezed it. We could all breathe again.

  Well, it weren’t too long after, that Mother came back and let us out. Which was a good thing, because I’d decided on writing our own duty list for the day, seeing as Aunty was gone without leaving one. I reckoned we could try for one hundred cushions stuffed before she came back. Nothing cheered Aunty more than sacks of cushions ready to be released.

  Now, the first thing I reckoned on doing was keeping Annie safe from harm, and I told her so. Well, actually, I told her I had a secret, and could I tell it to just her? And I just about got all my sisters out of the dorm, and then I slammed the door and bolted it safe, and then I told her so. Actually, I shouted it through the locked door, ‘No secret, sorry Annie.’ See, I figured we were preparing for War, weren’t we? And as Aunty liked to say, ‘The first casualty is usually truth.’

  ‘For your own safety I ain’t letting you out till Aunty’s back,’ I shouted, ignoring her cursing and bashing at the door. ‘Awful sorry, Annie, but when I come back from the supplies barn, I’ll fetch you in some porridge for breakfast.’

  ‘Sandra Saffron Walden,’ I said, grabbing her smock as she went off for the kitchen, ‘stand here and keep the door bolted while I go get the petals for cushions. Don’t you open it up. Or let anyone else. Or else.’

  ‘OK, Clam,’ Sandra said.

  Except when I came back from the barn with my barrowful, the dorm door was thrown open wide.

  Well.

  Well, the Goddess Daughter’s own steam hissed out my mouth to see that, it really did.

  Sandra stood by the open door, smiling beautiful and stupid as a snowdrop. ‘Annie said could she pop out because she forgot something. She said she’ll be back soon, and she promised not to bother with mushrooms. And there was something else, what was it? Oh yes. And you’re not to go getting hot and bothered. That’s just what she said, Clam. “Don’t let Clam go getting herself hot and bothered, and special not at Sandra,” she said. Which is me.’

  Well, I could have spat out my heart into Sandra’s black plaits right then, I really could. But, see, I didn’t have to. Because just then Emily popped by. Yes, she did and she buzzed busy enough to shake my ear to bits. And it was questions she had now –

  ‘Who’s the one really got hot and bothered, sister Leek, you or Annie?’

  ‘Hot and bothered. Hot and bothered. What needs doing, when something’s hot and bothered, sister Leek?’

  ‘Will you tell me, Emily?’ I said, cupping my ear steady.

  ‘I’ll tell you this, sister Leek. Aunty said to take care of each other. Shouldn’t you take care of hot and bothered Annie? Shouldn’t you take care of her good and proper?’

  ‘Very well, Emily,’ I said. ‘If you say so, Emily. Looks like I’ll have to take care of hot and bothered Annie good and proper then.’

  And I turned away from Sandra, who was staring at me something drop-jawed, and I went to start thinking what to do.

  THE GOOD FIGHT

  I BECKON THE demonmale closer.

  Soon enough he is right here, standing right over my bed. Blowing his hot breath down on me. ‘Is this all right with you, dear?’ he says.

  And I look up at him, and he looks down at me.

  And his hands come for me.

  And mine go at him.

  But before I can get a hold on his throat, his arms grab me.

  I am trapped up. Pinned in. Stuck down. So I can only moan.

  And he goes, ‘Shush, darling, shush. Everything’s going to be all right.’

  And his beard is pressing on me. And he is shuddering and sobbing. And I am trapped and moaning.

  It is most tricky to kill a body.

  Most tricky.

  EMILY

  COURSE, MY ELDER sisters moaned when I stood them under Emily’s eighteen-year-old statue on the Sacred Lawn, and told them what we were to do to Annie.

  It was a sad old winter afternoon. The birds had all gone off somewhere else to keep warm. The rose crops round the Lawn had died down to their bones. Even eighteen-year-old Emily had drips dropping off her pink nose. And I don’t mind saying, all our bodies were shivering even before we looked at the petal bin that Sandra and I had dragged down from the supplies barn.

  Mary Bootle touched the bin lid and said, ‘Golly, I don’t like this one bit. Sandra, you are our eldest, and Dorothy you are our cleverest, if one of you says, “Don’t do it,” I won’t do it. By jiminy, I won’t.’

  Eliza Aberdeen said, ‘I feel something queasy today with all this cold. If it’s all right with everyone, I’ll go ba
ck and rest up in the dorm.’

  Dorothy Macclesfield said, ‘Remind me, Clam. You said Emily told you this was the only way to save us all from the demonmales. How did she tell you? I’m wondering how this is a logical way to save Annie. Does it seem logical to you?’

  Nancy Nunhead snorted out snot on the Lawn and said, ‘We could pop Calamity in the bin instead.’ And Sandra Saffron Walden burst out crying.

  I climbed up on a bucket and looked inside the empty petal bin. We had placed it ten paces down from eighteen-year-old Emily’s statue, so she could keep an eye on things, and maybe help out with a miracle if she fancied it.

  Course, Emily was too busy buzzing about me to say yes or no to a miracle happening. But I still hoped. Like ten-year-old Emily had once made a miracle of keeping the chickenpox off our faces, and twelve-year-old Emily had helped Aunty’s Volume III writer’s block. It was sad that eighteen-year-old Emily hadn’t helped Truly at her birthday party, but maybe she was saving herself for Annie, because she knew how bad Annie needed it. Maybe that’s what she was doing.

  Now, I don’t mind saying here, I was something nervous myself about what we were to do to Annie, but thankful, Emily whispered in my ear, ‘Come on, Clam, you can’t stop now. It’s going to take a lot of filling, that petal bin, so chop-chop.’

  ‘It’s going to take a lot of filling, that petal bin,’ I said to my sulking sisters. ‘Chop-chop.’

  ‘You’re going to need more buckets to stand on for steps,’ Emily said.

  ‘We’re going to need more buckets to stand on for steps,’ I said.

  My sisters kicked their feet about the grass and didn’t budge.

  I sighed. ‘All right, Mary,’ I said. ‘Sandra is eldest, and Dorothy is cleverest, but just remember, neither were spoken to by Emily herself, and told what to do about Annie – Without a Moment’s Delay – as Emily put it to me herself.’

  ‘Eliza, wrap yourself in an extra fur – that should do you.’

  ‘Sandra and Nancy, I would remind you both that Annie St Albans’s unsisterly behaviour meant sore arms for all of us yesterday. Not to mention she revealed information about the Garden to a demonmale, theretofore putting us all in danger. Not to mention she said laughing with a demonmale was as nice as being with sisters. And not to mention she’s gone off after him again. Any one of these is a sure and certain Indicator that the Devil has got Himself in her and has started cooking her up Hyperthermia, sisters. Just like he did to Truly. And when He’s finished with Annie, He’ll be after us all.

  ‘And Dorothy Macclesfield, for the last time, Emily herself whispered to me yesterday that there ain’t but one way to stop a Fire burning too deep for a standpipe to cure. Emily herself said that. And how she said to do it was pure logic.’

  I wiped a drip off my nose. ‘See, sisters, it comes down to one marrow question, it really does. Do we want Annie free of Him, or do we not? Are we her loving sisters, or are we not? Do we want to save our Garden, or do we not?’

  I looked around the shivering bunch of them. ‘Now can we please get on, and get this bin filled up? Let’s make a chain from the standpipe. Happen a spot of bucket-lugging will warm us all up.’

  BREAKTHROUGH

  THERE HAS BEEN a breakthrough, you tell me. ‘Well done, Calamity,’ you say.

  Mrs Waverley is smiling, near to cracking, the demonmale is smiling, near to cracking. You are sure and certain cracking, Doctor Andrea Doors.

  Mrs Waverley rushes over and smothers me up. Ten long rabbiting seconds it lasts, all lard and a stink of lavender. And after her, the demonmale comes at me again. He squeezes me tight and everywhere, like he is feeling for a crunch of my bones, for an easy break.

  And you wipe off a tear, Doctor Andrea Doors, to see it. But you don’t do nothing to help me. No, you start to talk about ‘families’ and what ‘home life’ might be like. And Mrs Waverley and the demonmale get going on this too. You all talk and talk, till even Danny Zuko curls up under the mulch and dies from the boredom of it. And then you and Mrs Waverley think it might be a good idea if he comes at me again. To get used to each other. Closeness. To get used to that.

  And I sit dumb and helpless under his grip. I am dumb as a worm gone and died.

  THE DEVIL-IN-ANNIE

  WE SAT BY the hole in the Wall, waiting for Annie.

  The day went off. The Goddess Daughter blanketed the sky lid black and moonless. Down in the bog, we huddled about waiting, watching our breath blow out ice-white. The only noise about was busy bats and night birds, the only light came from the tiny holes in the lid to Heaven.

  I stuck up my finger and thumb to pinch-measure them holes, thinking of Truly pinch-measuring and whispering with Annie the night she fell down. And as I trapped them up, seemed like a Polperroey whisper flew in my ears. ‘Do you reckon when you get up close they are touchable, sit-on-able, climb-through-able?’

  ‘I don’t know, Truly.’

  ‘Well, what do you reckon, Clam? Want to climb with me and see for yourself, Clam? Want to come too?’

  And for just one rabbiting second, I thought it. Yes Truly, yes I would like to see how our Garden looks from the lid to Heaven. I really would.

  ‘You OK, Clam?’ Sandra’s voice said. ‘You stretching off the cold?’

  And I stopped my fingers and brought them down quick, and I sat them under my bottom, and I waited like that, watching the bog, till that whisper of Truly faded off.

  Nancy and Mary fetched branches from the orchard and started a fire to warm us.

  Sandra dropped pieces of battered Desiree Armfeldt in the embers to cook.

  Two jackdaws flapped down on a fern stump. Emily buzzed me to say they brought down a message from the Goddess Daughter – ‘Good luck.’ So I gave them a message to fly back up – ‘Thanks.’

  Eliza couldn’t feel her feet, so we put her in the barrow and drove her close to the fire. We all huddled close to the fire. Nancy grew the flames high and hissing, and Sandra turfed up bits of roasted Desiree Armfeldt and passed them round. But no one was rightly hungry. Dorothy poked her head in and out the Wall hole more times than a woodpecker. But Annie didn’t come.

  We waited.

  Moths stopped by to dance in the fire’s green and yellow flames. The smoke went worming up into the night. Our eyeballs grew big and white. All about the bog was quiet.

  Mary Bootle said, ‘Do you think it’s true you can see the bodies of Bowel-burning females twisting between the flames?’

  ‘Truly would have said so,’ I said. ‘Truly would have said just that.’

  Nancy snorted, ‘Truly said turning cartwheels made you taller. Truly said burping would start a pig growing inside you. Truly said you could live off plums forever like the wasps do.’

  ‘She tried that,’ I said smiling. ‘I remember.’

  ‘Till her farts blew her out of the tree!’ Nancy blew a raspberry on her elbow.

  Mary started singing all soft and low, ‘Truly Fartus, she’s truly, truly fartus, Fartus as a plum upon a tree.’

  And we looked into the twisting flames, as Mary kept on, and we all smiled. And our smiles grew fat, and our giggles rose up with the smoke. That was Truly Polperro for you.

  All sudden, Mary stopped. Flames jumped in the black of her eyes. ‘What if Annie doesn’t come back? Golly, what do we do then?’

  No one said nothing, but an owl off in the orchard. We were all watching Nancy heave another log on the fire, her shadow beetling and big on the Wall.

  I looked at the fire, and I looked round my huddled sisters. ‘She has to.’

  ‘She definitely promised me she would,’ Sandra whispered. ‘Definitely.’

  I kicked the log.

  Wham.

  ‘She has to.’

  The wood cracked open and a nestful of earwigs ran out, and ran away to the end and shrivelled up.

  Mary bit her lip. ‘Well, golly, I’m awful sorry, Clam, but I’ve just thought, even if she does come back, I don’t know if I can do it.
Not to Annie. I mean, I understand why Emily says it’s necessary. But it ain’t a demonmale we’re doing it to, is it? It’s Annie. It’s Annie St Albans, our sister. So, golly, I don’t know if I can.’

  Nancy sat down heavy and stared into the fire. ‘I agree with Mary.’

  I watched the spitting log. I watched a tiny red spider rush out and die. I watched the smoke shift strangeness over my sisters’ faces. And then I looked up and fixed my eyeballs on theirs, one by one. ‘Listen up good and proper, sisters, because I ain’t saying this again. It doesn’t matter whether you say you can or not, you will do it. You will do it for Annie’s sake, to get her brought back to us before it’s too late. You will do it because the Devil is deep inside her. He is sloshing about in her blood. He is heating her up like stew in a pan. Remember this, sisters, it ain’t Annie we are doing it to, but Him.’

  Mary’s bottom lip wobbled under her teeth. ‘It ain’t Annie.’

  ‘It ain’t Annie, sisters. You will do it, you will do it to Him.’

  Must have been hours into the night, a scratching noise woke me. I had been dreaming of being swung in a chair by my demonmale, and it took a second to shake his nasty laughter from my ears. I sat up and screamed to my sisters to wake. I turned my torch at the hole, where, sure enough, Annie St Albans was scrabbling back to us. With a grin on her face hot enough to burn up the Garden.

  ‘Goodness, good evening, sisters,’ she said, shaking her hair of brick dirt.

  I shone my torch at her head. She wasn’t wearing her headscarf.

  I shone over the rest of her. Instead of a warm winter smock and thick fur coat, she was covered up in Outside clothing – a black jumper and blue trousers.

  And I am sorry to say it, but she looked about as right in our Garden as that demonmale did in our yard. She had white laced shoes on her feet.

  Annie grinned. ‘Goodness, Calamity, you look ever so stern behind that torch. Were you all waiting for me? Well, good, sisters, because I have such things to tell you. Is that you, Eliza Aberdeen, here as well?’ Annie shaded her eyes. ‘That’s nice of you, I hope you’re warm enough. Clam, would you mind lowering that torch? Well, I tell you this, sisters. Either I am turned loonhead or this Garden is, it sure is.’