The First Book of Calamity Leek

by Paula Lichtarowicz

  Her eyes turned to the north-eastern Wall of Safekeeping, where the Goddess Daughter had just pulled the darkest blanket off the sky lid. Maria smiled at Annie. Then, all careful, one bone at a time, she got up and started walking off for the yew path north.

  ‘Where you going?’ I called out quick. ‘You’re not going now, Maria. You can’t go now. You can’t go up by Mother’s Abode, Maria. That’s Out of Bounds on Pain of Death, Maria. That’s the wrong way. Where are you going?’

  But she went off anyway, under the northern Crème de la Crèmes and up the path into the yews. And we sat and watched her go.

  Annie started to cry in little dry gasps over the cat in her lap.

  I blew my nose on the end of my fur and tried to speak, I really did.

  But no words came.

  A LETTER

  YOU COME IN when I am alone, don’t you, Doctor Andrea Doors, and you tell me you have something for me. ‘This came for you,’ you say. ‘I think you’re ready to read it.’

  You hand me a white envelope. It smells of medicine and rose jelly. It has my name written on the front in purple ink. My name. Just mine.

  For the attention of Niece Leek – it says –

  Absolutely Private.

  My heart flips in its box.

  I shove the envelope quicksharp under my pillow until you are gone.

  OUTSIDE

  ‘MOTHER AND AUNTY love us and do what is right and proper to us,’ is what I said in the end. ‘It would be good to remember that.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mary Bootle sniffed. ‘Golly, I couldn’t lock up a baby even if it was very, very naughty.’

  ‘Pigs ain’t ever shut up alone, are they?’ Nancy said.

  The Goddess Daughter pulled a blanket off the sky lid. Eliza turned off her torch. Dorothy stared at the heap of Outside clothes. ‘What can it mean? Trees around us everywhere, and no injuns nowhere. Maria locked away for years for going Outside. Then there’s this Sam Matthews with so few Demonic Indicators on him. This ain’t but counter to everything the Appendix tells us. Where is the logic in it all?’

  Fast as a flash in a storm, Annie’s eyes went at Dorothy. ‘Do you want to know what I saw? If I tell you, you won’t go—’

  ‘We won’t go doing nothing like that ever again – to no one,’ Dorothy said.

  ‘We only did what Emily told me was necessary,’ I whispered. ‘We were only trying to get the Devil out of you. Out of cooking you up.’

  Annie stroked the cat on her lap and looked at those strange-laced shoes in front of her. Then she dropped the deadliest words I ever will hear. ‘What if there ain’t no Devil?’

  Well.

  Well, try thinking on an answer to that fat lie. Try thinking what to say to someone who says there ain’t no sky lid above you, or your hand ain’t really on the end of your arm. For long rabbiting seconds I tried, but my mouth didn’t move.

  Annie stroked Kathy Selden and watched me with a smile that said, ‘Yes, I am waiting for you.’ Dorothy’s face turned to me with a smile that said, ‘I am interested.’ Mary was sucking a plait. Eliza looked to be dozing. And Nancy was stretching an earthworm. ‘I am waiting,’ said Annie St Albans’s smile.

  ‘Very well, Annie.’ I tried to keep the shake from my voice, ‘You may as well say I’m not here and you’re not here, and this torch ain’t, nor that cat, neither.’ My finger pointed to the sky, where soon enough He would be raging and bashing against the lid. ‘You think He won’t be up there today, Annie? Burning down and cooking up every unfurred female on the planet?’

  ‘Well, Clam, what if the Sun is just a thing called the Sun, and it ain’t the Devil. And if the Devil ain’t the Sun, what is He then? Where is He then?’

  ‘Can’t see air, Annie, but you would die without it. The Sun is the Devil, Annie. That’s the Sun’s purpose. That’s His name, Annie. Goddess-given. Her Sun. His purpose.’

  ‘What if people Outside don’t actually think that?’

  ‘Oh, Annie, what does it matter what demon-deceived Outsiders think?’

  So I set down the one reason she couldn’t argue against, ‘If there ain’t no Devil there ain’t no point in any one of us. Purpose, Annie. If there ain’t no Devil, there ain’t no purpose in growing us here at all.’

  I waited for her to see the sense in this, but it was Dorothy who spoke next. She looked up, not a twitch was bothering her nose. ‘Enough, Calamity. Annie, please tell us everything you learned. Tell it straight and un­sugared. We should not decide what to think about Outsiders, until we know whatever there is to know.’

  Dorothy finished without one blink of an eye. Which I thought to point to and say, ‘Is that Dorothy’s head’s normal behaviour, Annie, or is eighteen-year-old Emily making some kind of a calming miracle on her, after she made a miracle of loosening Maria’s tongue? And if it is Emily at work, well, stop and have a think about who took Emily’s life, Annie. Yes, Annie, a demonmale. And who sent the demonmale to do it, Annie? The Devil, you say, Annie? Quite right. Theretofore the Devil is present.’

  But just as I was working my head through all this, Annie started talking.

  ‘He was waiting for me, Dorothy,’ she said, ‘in the clearing where I had seen him before. He was sitting on the fallen tree, cutting at the bark beneath an old woodpecker hole with a knife.’

  Annie talked on, and I watched her words puffing out into the last of the night, her hands shaping trunks and knives and Sams. I watched her words puff out easy as breathing. And right then I started to realise the truth of it. And the truth was this – Annie had been Charmed by the Outside. Annie weren’t bothered with our Garden no more. Even if we drowned her all out with cooling water – which no one would now – but even if we did, we wouldn’t ever get this unbothering out. I watched Annie’s hands dancing beneath her easy words, and I would probably have wept out all my tears right then, if sadness hadn’t frozen them deep inside me.

  And unbothered Annie went on talking.

  ‘Sam turned red when he saw me. He said, “Jesus, you made me jump,” and, “for a minute I thought you were a ghost.” Which, he said, was a joke by the way. Then he rubbed at his head and said he wasn’t sure I would come back, but – “It’s cool,” he said, “that you did.”

  ‘So I asked him what he was doing to that poor tree, and he laughed and said, “Just, you know, marking my patch. You can’t be too careful round here.”

  ‘“Oh yes?” I said.

  ‘“Girls,” he said, “wandering loose. A terrible thing, you know. Girls.”

  ‘Three letters were scratched into the bark under the woodpecker hole – S A M.

  ‘“Shall I do you?”

  ‘“Do me what?”

  ‘He smiled and said, “You’re all straight lines so you’ll be easy. But turn round or you’ll make me nervous.”

  ‘Did I tell you, sisters, he has very white teeth?

  ‘So I went off and had a look for mushrooms in the moss patch. Then I watched a string of ants dragging needles up a mound. Funny thing was, it made me think of us, up and down the barrow path with our tools. Truth be told, I could have watched them busy insects a while, but Sam called, “OK, you’re done. Wonky but done.”

  ‘A N N I E it said beneath his name. I rubbed my finger across the bark feeling the sharp edges of the cuts and the wet flesh underneath.

  ‘Sam grinned. “Afraid you’re stuck with me now.”

  ‘I looked on them two names. “Oh, I ain’t afraid of nothing,” I said.

  ‘And he said he didn’t suppose I was, and he went a bit pink and he closed up his knife and put it in his pocket, and he looked down and shuffled his shoes and said, “What should we do now? We could go into Betws, if you want. Have you been to the Crown, because I was thinking we could go to the Crown, see who’s on. It’s Sunday, so if Mike’s on, it won’t be a problem, you know, getting a drink in. Um, if you fancy it.”

  ‘So I said, would I be safe? So he said, was I asking if he was a perve, w
as that it? And I didn’t know what to say to that word, so I shrugged.

  ‘“Thanks very much,” he said. “Because I’m not.” And his cheeks grew pinker, and he looked down at his shoes and said, “I promise you’ll be safe.”

  ‘“On what?” I said. “Have to promise on something.”

  ‘“On my little sister’s life.”

  ‘“You have a sister?”

  ‘“Unfortunately.”

  ‘Stop,’ Dorothy said. ‘He said he has a sister?’

  ‘Called Lucy.’

  ‘How’d he trap her?’ I said.

  Annie said sharp, ‘Sam didn’t catch her, Clam.’

  ‘Is that what he said to you?’

  ‘He said he liked her. She wasn’t too much trouble for a girl, he said.’

  ‘They all say that. Think on, Annie. It’s demonmale lying, nothing more. This is very very very very bad news, Annie.’

  Dorothy sighed. ‘I wish this was getting less illogical. But it’s only getting more so.’

  ‘And more,’ Annie said. ‘And more.’

  ‘Well,’ Dorothy said, ‘well then, you had better keep going.’

  ‘All right,’ Annie said, ‘I will.’

  ‘“Let’s go to this Crown then,” I said. I looked about the clearing where there were four or five paths out. “Which way is it?”

  ‘And Sam rubbed his head. He was staring at me like I had my smock on inside out. “Like that?”

  ‘So I said, “What do you mean ‘like that’? Is it my headscarf? Because I’m not taking that off. Well, is it?”

  ‘“Yes,” he said. “No. Well, I mean, for starters, do you never wear shoes?”

  ‘“We will when we leave the Garden for the Outside.”

  ‘“So where are they?”

  ‘I tried not to look at him like he was being slowbrained about it. “Well, I haven’t actually left for the Outside yet, have I? This is me just popping out for a quick look.”

  ‘“So you don’t go out much then?”

  ‘“Well, I’m here today, aren’t I?”

  ‘“But you go to the shops, right? Or the cinema? So you must wear shoes then. I mean you must have a weekend pass or something.” Sam wasn’t stopping from staring at me, so I shook my head. “No, actually, I haven’t, Sam.”

  ‘“Well, you’ve done Llandudno, at the very least.”

  ‘“Done what no?”

  ‘Sam rubbed his head then and grinned. “Yeah, right. Very funny. You’re taking the piss out of me.”

  ‘“I’m taking nothing out of you and certainly not your piss.”

  ‘He looked me over. “No, sorry, you’re not getting me with this one. Just because you’re wearing all this nun stuff. You’re from St Emily’s, right? So you’ve been to church. Come on, admit it, the Church of the Sacred Heart in Betws?”

  ‘“Where?”

  ‘“Very funny.”

  ‘“No it’s not. Where is Betws?”

  ‘Sam stepped back then. He was still grinning, but it was starting to drop off the edges. “Betws-y-Coed. I mean, you know, you have to have been to Betws. Every man, woman and sheep in North Wales has been to Betws. Betws is ten miles away.”

  ‘“Well, I’ve never been to Betws, Sam. Never. It means not ever, you know. Look, Sam, we are safe inside. We don’t need to go out. Now, please stop laughing at me.” Happen I was something angry when I said this, sisters. “Please stop it now.”

  ‘“Jesus,” he said then. He said it all quiet, looking at his shoes. “Jesus.”

  ‘“We are grown in safety, Sam. That’s all. Is there actually something wrong with that?”

  ‘He didn’t answer. He started to rub the sides of his face – he does a lot of this rubbing.

  ‘“You sure there’s nothing wrong, Sam?”

  ‘He looked up at me, and he thought a bit, and then he shook his head slow, and said he didn’t suppose it was any of his business. And I agreed with that.

  ‘Course, then he decided to look at my feet again like there weren’t nothing more fascinating about me than my ten toes. He grinned. “Hey, I’ve an idea. Ever been on a motorbike before?” He lifted a branch, “Actually, it’s more of a scooter.” And he ducked out of the clearing and disappeared in the trees.

  ‘Course, I knew it was the opposite direction to the Garden, sisters, but I hurried to catch him.’

  BETWS

  ‘WELL, ANNIE,’ I said, jumping in quick, ‘thank you very much for all that, but I don’t need to hear much more. You got Charmed by a demonmale and put on Outside clothes and rode an Outside bike into an Outside town and saw Outside people, and now you will tell us everything Outside is practically perfect in every way, and everything is wrong in here.’

  Sandra looked at me drop-jawed. ‘Golly, Clam, how do you know all that?’

  ‘Plain-cooked simple, Sandra, I am sorry to say. Annie is only being what foolish females are like – bamboozled by demonlies. That is what Outside females are like – the ones without proper Education, Education, Education. Only Annie’s had her Education, Education, Education in here, so she should know better, she really should.’

  ‘All right then, Clam, here’s some education for you.’ Annie stopped stroking Kathy Selden and looked up at me. ‘Cushions.’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘I saw our cushions.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ I said.

  ‘The cushions we stitch, Clam. I saw them sitting in a window in Betws. There were scarves and dresses and bags in the window. And actually our cushions too.’

  ‘What?’ Dorothy said. ‘Our cushions?’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ I said. ‘Must have been they were demonmale copies of our cushions.’

  Annie shrugged and went back to stroking the cat.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ I said louder. ‘You must have looked wrong, Annie. Them cushions go straight up to the sky lid to provide cloud cover against Him. Everyone knows that, Annie. Ask Aunty when she comes back, if you won’t listen to me.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, Clam, but I know what I saw sitting in that window, and it was Nancy’s cushion.’

  ‘Eh?’ Nancy said, dropping her worm.

  ‘A “Charity Begins at Home” one. Got your wonky “e”s all over it. So I asked Sam to take me inside.

  ‘A woman stared at me when I went in. Sam said it was my headscarf doing it. See, none of the Betws females were protecting their faces at all, which is something else I have to tell you. But I didn’t bother with her. I went straight to the cushions stacked on a shelf by the back wall. There was a tiny label attached to the top one. It said –

  HEAVEN SCENT! Organic rose petal, fair trade silk cushions.

  Hand-embroidered by St Emily’s Orphanage (reg’d charity 09784438).

  Fire retardant. Thirty pounds.

  ‘That’s what it said, that label. I think it was one of yours, Mary, that cushion. It had your cross-stitch kisses all over the seams. But they were all there, sisters – “Home Is Where the Heart Is, Home Sweet Home, No Place like Home, Show Me the Way to Go Home”. Sam asked if I wanted one. So I asked him what they were used for. And he looked at me and said, “This time you really are messing with me. You’re asking what a cushion is used for?”

  ‘So I had to run outside. And when I looked at the sky lid there were plenty of clouds up there shuffling about near the Sun—’

  Right here, I am sorry to say, Annie started laughing. Far worse than mushrooms was the laugh that came from Annie.

  ‘—and I asked Sam if those clouds up there in the sky looked anything like the cushions piled on that shelf, and – and—’ and Annie ran out of words and into strange, open-throated laughter.

  ‘Annie, Annie, Annie,’ I said. ‘We stitch up those clouds for our safekeeping and for the safekeeping of all females out there, so why are you asking demonmales anything? What do you think they’re going to say but demonlies?’

  But she just fell her head back and kept on laughing.


  ‘Annie, stop that!’ I shouted. ‘STOP! STOP! STOP!’

  The cat woke with a cry, and jumped off her lap and ran into the Glamis Castles. I don’t mind saying I was something shaky myself then, and my sisters were something dumb. We all looked at Annie, and Annie looked at us, and she shook her head over and over like to say, ‘Take it off me, please. Unscrew me.’ She was laughing and crying all together, ‘Oh sisters, can’t you see, we ain’t stitching up cloud safety – we’re making pads for bottoms! That’s what we’ve been doing every blessed, sore-fingered night – making pads for Outside bottoms to sit on!’

  Well, we all watched our sister laugh and cry until she had no more of either left in her. The Goddess Daughter took another blanket off the sky lid.

  ‘You’d better go on,’ Dorothy said in the quiet after.

  Well, course, Annie did go on then, oh yes. Annie went on talking about demonmales wandering free in Betws. How normal they looked. How one was just like her own dream demonmale. He had a little girl, just like the one in her dreams. They were feeding ducks together, just like in one of her dreams. And the cars and the lorries were so noisy out there. And the river – well, I can’t remember, but I think most probably Annie said it was wet.

  Sometime about now, I think I told her I was turning sick.

  ‘You will be,’ she said. ‘Because never mind them cushions, when we got to the Crown, and when I saw what I saw, and heard what I heard, well, it went and tipped everything I thought I ever knew upside down. Like turning over a cream jug in the yard. Everything I thought I knew about us and the Garden ran out onto dirty ground, so it could never be scooped back in again clean.’

  It was then Annie told us how she met a grey-beard demonmale in the Crown, called Sunday Mike. He was reading one of the Outside newspapers, and it had a baby face on the front, one with a blotch that Annie thought looked just like Baby Sainsbury’s, and wasn’t that a funny thing?

  And it was then that two more demonmales came crawling out the room corner, smelling of yeast, and hungry as spiders to hear about us, because we St Emily orphan girls were rarer than things called unicorns round these parts, they said.