The First Book of Calamity Leek

by Paula Lichtarowicz

  ‘’Fraid I can’t. And please don’t shout so.’

  PAM PAM PAM. ‘Unlock this door.’

  ‘My leg ain’t for moving no more, Maria. Sorry, I’m waiting for my spit. Are you waiting for yours?’

  Three nice quiet rabbiting seconds.

  ‘CALAMITY LEEK!’ PAM PAM PAM. ‘COME AND UNLOCK THIS DOOR!’

  ‘Please go away, Maria, my leg hurts.’

  ‘Clam, you must unlock this door.’

  PAM PAM PAM. ‘CLAM, UNLOCK THE DOOR!’ PAM PAM PAM. ‘CLAM, UNLOCK THIS DOOR NOW!’

  Well, that PAM PAM PAMing went on, noisy enough to smash up my brain. Bowels turned to silent black nothing a while. Then Bowels came back, dancing white hot. The PAM PAMing had stopped. And in my barrow quiet, them words of Truly rushed back to my brain –

  ‘Just some naughty sisters, Clam.’

  Whose sisters? my brain asked.

  ‘Whose sisters, Truly?’ I shouted out.

  ‘Truly? Whose sisters are locked in the dorm?’

  But Truly didn’t answer me.

  The only answer was something crashing down outside.

  Well.

  Well, weren’t nothing for it then. There really weren’t.

  Come on, Calamity’s deadmeat body, pull yourself out from under this barrow quicksharp. Out to where it is bright and screaming and too hot to breathe. Never mind breathing, Calamity, there are sisters locked in there.

  Come on, Calamity Leek’s slug body, slither to the Hole door.

  Slither, Calamity, slither. Reach for the bolt.

  Too high. Come on, hands, pull this deadmeat leg up the door. Quick, quick, quick. Come on, leg, hold on, will you?

  Well. Happen that one leg of mine was good enough for a second or two standing. Pain squealed up the other leg, setting my head to spinning.

  Never mind that, ain’t a head you need, Calamity, it’s hands. Come on, hands, you’ll be cooked soon enough, so don’t you mind wiggling off the hot bolt quick quick quick.

  Done.

  The Hole door swung open and slapped me with cold air. My body fell in.

  Maria Liphook caught me. She looked quizzical at my leg.

  ‘Chop it off,’ I said, but she didn’t hear. I was being carried down someplace cool. Which was mighty odd. There being no place cool in Bowels.

  ‘What, Clam?’

  ‘There ain’t no place cool in Bowels.’

  My head turned inside out to blackness.

  When I woke up, the air was filled with pigs and hens and sisters. My sisters. Maria Liphook was flapping furs at flames, like she had grown wings. Bodies were racing buckets from the standpipe, jumping over pigs and hens, throwing water at the fence, at the dorm, at the latrines.

  Someone was shouting about a big injun coming down through the roses pouring out water. It could have been Maria Liphook, or maybe it was Truly Polperro come back to have a nosy, or happen it was Emily woken up and ready to start buzzing in my ear again. But injuns don’t pour water. And Emily was in Heaven, wasn’t she? She died and ascended straight up to Heaven when she was four years old. Emily wouldn’t ever be in Bowels.

  I had to laugh then. I had to laugh out loud.

  Because this was Bowels. That’s what we were in. The Devil’s Bowels had come to the Garden. That’s what had happened, I knew it now, for sure and certain. We had made a hole in the Wall and the Devil brought His Bowels in to us. And my silly running sisters didn’t know it. They weren’t ever going to stop them flames.

  LEAVING

  HANDS LIFTED ME onto white cloth.

  ‘Not ready for the spit,’ I told them.

  Demonmale faces, big-boned as cows, their voices rumbling thunder. ‘What’s she saying? Easy there, Calamity, is it? Lie still now, love.’

  I was moving out of the yard. One cloud sat helpless above me in a Sunny sky. A stink of roasted pig and wood everywhere. So many demonboils bobbling about, that my mouth couldn’t do nothing but moan. They were carting me to the spit, and there weren’t one thing I could do to stop them.

  Annie’s voice came close in my ear, ‘Hush, Clam, the men are helping us. They’re going to take you somewhere to make you better.’ Annie’s face was bouncing by the side of me, Annie St Albans, who had run away from Bowels and who was back now, her hand laid on my head.

  The demonmales crunched their boots through the steaming black Glamis Castle stumps. Our white rosy army turned to nothing but puddles. We were in the Sacred Lawn now, shrunk down and melted eighteen-year-old Emily watched us go. Black tears were dripping off her melted eyes. Tears for being left behind with us to burn in Bowels. Ruined, like we all were now.

  My leg was bounced so sore, I said may as well chop it off now as roast it later. Chop it off. But they didn’t listen to me, these demonmales.

  Crunch and crunch the demonboots went up the burned yew path. The yews frazzled to crackling stumps, like crow bones with their wings burned off.

  Annie’s face came over me. ‘Clam, listen to me. You have to go now.’

  We were stopped outside a white van. She kissed me on my cheek. ‘Be brave. We are all going. We must all be brave.’

  But I didn’t want to be lifted inside a white box by these demonmales. I wanted to leave the Garden to fight the Good Fight, not to be roasted inside this stinking box. I tried to bite at the hands that were coming for me. I tried to growl, because everything was turned to ruin now, everything was.

  A cup of poisoned air was pushed down over my mouth and strapped on me. I held my breath against it as long as I could, I really did.

  AFTER EVERYTHING

  MY NAME IS Elsa. That is what they say, Mrs Waverley and the demonmale who ain’t nothing better to do than stick their bottoms to the chairs in here, day after day after day.

  Elsa Waverley.

  They named me, they say. Do I like it, this name? they ask.

  I look at them sitting there, the demonmale gripping poor Mrs Waverley’s hand. I think about telling them that it don’t have no meaning at all this name of theirs. That I have one perfect one of my own, thank you very much. I think about telling them to go away and bring my sisters instead. I would write it like this –

  GO AWAY

  GO AWAY PLEASE NOW

  YOURS SINCERELY, CALAMITY LEEK.

  But it would only set Mrs Waverley to wailing, so I don’t.

  Course, you come in, don’t you, Doctor Andrea Doors, and say soon we’ll be talking about going home for a few days, to try out being in their house.

  And right then it pops in my head, a cold little thought. Sharp and perfect as a fresh-grown thorn. So I have to have a smile at that.

  ‘Is there a kitchen there?’ I say.

  And Mrs Waverley jumps in, ‘Oh yes, darling! We can do some baking if you’d like.’

  And I give her a little nod but don’t say nothing to that. Because I am thinking now about my thought. I am thinking about the Showreel. I am thinking about the Cinderella kitchen.

  And you, Doctor Andrea Doors, you smile at me and stop my thinking by saying today you’d like to talk about love. These people are my parents, and they love me more than anything. Would I like to tell them what I think love is?

  Well, everyone knows what love is. I loved the Garden and my second-wind sisters, and look what went happening to them. And the roses and the pigs and the hens, and even that fleabag dog sometimes. I loved Gretel – who Millie loved most of all – and look what happened to her. Millie loved Gretel, and though you have given her another rat, well, this Gretel Two can’t turn no handstands, nor lick up no falling tears, can she? See, love ain’t an overnight sprouting the moment a body sees a new rat. No, love needs to be sowed deep, composted regular and kept blight-free for a hope of it to bud. It needs soil and fresh air, and it needs watching over by Aunty. And happen in this white-walled place, well, that just ain’t possible, is it? And if Aunty ain’t here that ain’t possible neither. So I reckon on not bothering with it no more.

  But
I don’t say this. I turn away, because my eyes are filling up something busy now that I am thinking about Aunty, and I have a feel under my pillow for the envelope you gave me yesterday.

  For the attention of Niece Leek,

  Absolutely Private, it says. It is just for me.

  I wipe my eyes and I slide the paper out from its envelope, and lay it on top of the sheet. It has a blotch on the top corner, like a creamy thumb might have sat there a second. I smooth down the paper and I read along every word, never mind it is all written inside my eyeballs now.

  Dear Niece,

  I’m sorry I didn’t manage to tell you about your Mother’s eyes, because a friend should always keep her promises. Well, they are hazel.

  Now, niece, I’m afraid to say my life has suffered another Splashback. There’s a perfect DNA match on the pot of spirits of salt; c’est la vie, the noose has been drawn tight around my neck. So I’m sorry to say I won’t be seeing you again.

  Given the circumstances, one might have hoped for a somewhat plusher locale – the Hyde Park Hilton, say – to do the deed. But que sera, sera, niece, a Brummie B and B it shall be.

  And given my own extraordinary life circumstances, I have decided that my manuscripts, well, as soon as the police are through with them, I’m leaving them to you. Ophelia’s reputation rests entirely in your hands.

  It only remains for me to say, do not grieve for me, Calamity Leek, I shall not suffer. But do continue to cleanse and moisturise and bind back those ears at night. Watch yourself with the cake, and who knows how you might turn out. Remember even Dumbo got lift-off in the end!

  And so, I bid you so long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, adieu,

  Your loving ‘Aunty’ and dearest friend,

  Ophelia Swindon

  P.S. And just for the record, Calamity, I did so enjoy our teatimes together. Your little face proved quite the tonic to soothe the troubled soul.

  You watch me wipe out my eyes and pop my letter away under the pillow.

  ‘I know you loved her very much,’ you say. ‘And I know at the moment you find it hard to believe she is dead.’

  ‘Not dead, Doctor Andrea Doors. She has gone to Heaven.’

  ‘That’s interesting,’ you say, ‘perhaps we can discuss that.’

  But we won’t, Doctor Andrea Doors. Because my Aunty isn’t yours to talk about. And happen I must wipe off my eyes quicksharp, because the door is opening and Annie St Albans and Nancy Nunhead and Dorothy Macclesfield and Mary Bootle are coming in. Sam comes too. Course, they are all called other things now, my sisters, but I ain’t for bothering with that, no.

  ‘Hello, Clam,’ Annie says at the door. She is grinning. Everyone is grinning. Standing in their Outside clothes and shoes, and grinning.

  They rush up to me. And I sit up taller in this bed for being with them, never mind their Outside clothes. I take a touch on Nancy’s hand, and it feels just as fatty as ever. And that feels good.

  Though she is sad for Baby Sainsbury’s and Toddler South Mimms who couldn’t be woken after the fire, Mary’s eyes are popping. ‘Golly, Clam, did you know I have a baby sister, all my own, and two others that look like me, just like. I reckon we could even swap teeth and they would fit. What do you think to that?’

  I make a shrug like I ain’t bothered. Happen Mary has been took too easy with Outside ways, that’s what I think, but I don’t say.

  Annie is smiling at Sam, who is standing behind her. He is touching her shoulder. It doesn’t look like he is hurting her. Sam has brought peonies. He says they are for me. Course, his face goes all pink when he says he knows they don’t smell as nice as the Garden’s roses, but he hopes I will like them. Annie says she is going to stay with him when we are all let out of this hospital, on account of her real mother not being alive no more. Which she says is just how it is, but Sam’s one is very nice, and Kathy cat might live there too.

  Dorothy is back to her twitching ways, and I ain’t surprised at that. ‘Eliza Aberdeen is getting new blood in her,’ she says. ‘Maria’s lying under a sun but not a real sun – and she’s got to go outside every day. We are all going out in the garden here tomorrow. We don’t need headscarves here, you know. It is good for you, a little sunlight. For your bones. How that can be, I don’t know. You know, there is so much I don’t know. I don’t know if I will ever know all there is to know out here.’ And poor old Dorothy’s head near rattles off its neck at the thought of it.

  Nancy swivels her knees so her shoes squeak on the floor. ‘My father says now they have found Mother, he is going to write and ask them to string her up. Even if bad things happened to her own daughter, it ain’t a reason for her to try to use my daughter to get her revenge, he says.’

  ‘What’s stringing up?’ Dorothy asks.

  Nancy shrugs and squeaks some more. Dorothy sets to writing in a little book she has called her ‘Book of Questions’, which Annie says is Dorothy’s very own Appendix on how things are for real. ‘For real,’ Annie says, which is words off Sam, which Annie’s tongue is stacked full of these days.

  ‘Say revenge again, Nancy,’ Dorothy says.

  ‘Revenge means kill off.’ Nancy is wearing trousers with her squeaking shoes, and a pig-pink shirt she says is in remembrance of the boars that got killed. ‘Can I thump on your pot, Clam? See if it hurts?’

  Well, I let her, and it does.

  ‘Did you get a letter then?’ Annie says. ‘Only my doctor said you did, from Aunty.’

  So I bring it out and I read it to them.

  ‘You know,’ Annie says, when I finish and everyone is stood about quiet, ‘Sam reckons it was Aunty who phoned the police, and said about us being kept hidden inside the Garden and everything, just before she ate up her pills and medicine.’

  Sam is looking at the floor. He don’t say yes or no to this. I look over at Doctor Andrea Doors. She don’t say yes or no either. I will have to have a think about that, I reckon. And I look at Annie who smiles at me, and my eyes start up watering again.

  ‘Oh, Clam, and you know the injuns?’ Annie grins. ‘Well, there really aren’t any. Not near the Garden, there’re none. Only, look – see this book Sam found.’

  Annie shows me a hard brown book, opened on a page with a photograph inside. It is an injun – all redskinned with feathers down his back – so I shudder to see it.

  ‘So they are real then, Annie.’

  ‘There’s still some around,’ Sam says. ‘Only they live a long way from here, in a different country.’

  ‘Turn the page, Clam,’ Annie says. ‘Go on.’

  I don’t want to, but I do. And there’s a photograph of injuns that look like they are female, sitting with male injuns by a fire. And next to them are little females playing with little males and a dog.

  ‘See, babies and sisters and everything!’ Mary says.

  I look at this photograph. It will take some thinking on.

  ‘Keep the book,’ Sam says, turning pink-cheeked again. ‘It’s a present.’

  A white-coated woman comes in the room. She says it is time for my sisters to go to their lesson about Outside, which I will be going to when my leg is a bit better.

  Course, them leaving really does get my nose and eyes watering busy. And everyone comes round me, and presses in with their breath. And my eyes plop out more tears, because I can still smell something of their Garden ways. That hasn’t been all lost from them yet.

  ‘You ain’t said much,’ Nancy says. ‘Would you like to try on my shoe, eh?’

  ‘Would you like me to sing you a lullaby,’ Mary says. ‘I’ve made a new one for my new baby sister. I can sing it if you like?’

  ‘Well, Clam?’ Annie says. ‘You haven’t said what you think to everything.’

  So then I say it. ‘Sometimes I wish I had just burned up with the pigs.’

  GOING HOME

  ANNIE SAID I saved everyone I could. Annie said, ‘It will all be all right in the end, you’ll see. Be a bit brave if you can, Clam. Happen you we
re bravest of all of us.’ And then Annie laid a kiss on my cheek, and she left me.

  And here we are. Me and Mrs Waverley and the demonmale stuck in this white room. And, straight off, Mrs Waverley starts up, ‘Oh darling, we hate to see you upset like this. Why don’t you talk to us about it? Please let us help you, we only want to help you.’

  But I ain’t for looking on her right now. Not now, Mrs Waverley, thank you. I take a tissue for my nose and I close my eyes for thinking. I think of Aunty, lying back after eating all her pills, waiting to ascend to Heaven. I think I will think of her smiling. Most probably she was singing ‘I dreamed a dream’ when she went up.

  I think of Mother’s eyes and whether they are ‘hazel’ for sure, and whether this means some gold is hid in there for only Heavenly eyes to see. I try to see her in a white room like this, waiting to be stringed. But I can’t fix her in this new place. No, I can only see her sitting on the yew path holding sixteen-year-old Emily’s head, full of brown-eyed sorrow for her daughter died off horrible.

  I open my eyes and I am looking straight at Mrs Waverley, who ain’t nothing like my Mother for beauty, even if she has brown eyes too. And before I know it to stop them, my lips start to curl in a smile. Which has her crying out and running at me, and the demonmale flapping his ears and coming too.

  And before I think to say, ‘No, go away, get off me,’ I am being smothered up.

  ‘Oh my darling daughter,’ Mrs Waverley says, ‘we knew you’d come back to us in the end. We’ve missed you so much, Elsa. We can’t wait to get you home.’

  I try to get away. I try to say, ‘Please stop. Get off me, I can’t breathe no more.’

  But I am all coated up in hot fat and tears. And truth be told, it don’t feel so bad, so I don’t bother saying it. No I don’t. Seeing as I can’t move nowhere, I reckon on getting back to my thinking instead.

  So I have a think about Mrs Waverley’s kitchen at home.

  And I think about the Showreel.

  I think about Cinderella in the kitchen sweeping, and those two fat sisters looking on lovingly and sharpening their knives.