The Carhullan Army (20 page)

The doors were suddenly kicked open and before I knew what was happening there was noise and commotion, instructions were yelled out and the women in the dormitory found themselves lying face down on the floor with guns pointing at their heads. Confused and clumsy, I wondered if the Authority had arrived.

I could still taste Shruti in my mouth as I lay with my cheek pressed on the boards, and my heart pounding. A few people were whimpering. A cold shank of metal, maybe the barrel of a gun, came to rest gently on the back of my skull. Then it was lifted off. I could hear the baby crying in the barn next door, and the younger children who slept with their mothers were being told to hush.

The drill was carried out expertly, almost in darkness; the eerie glow from a hand-held light-stick was the only illumination as the covers were torn off each bed. Then the lights were switched on and Jackie walked into the room. I looked up. She had on fatigues, a thick padded vest with loops across its placket, and her hair was tied back. Her backbone looked completely extended, she stood erect, and her face was stern and remote, as if every person on the floor were a stranger to her. There was a haughty magnificence to the way she positioned herself in the centre of the dormitory, looking down on those held captive and kneeling at her feet.

The others in her unit wore balaclavas over their faces and black clothing. There were eight of them in the room, stationed at different points, holding short black rifles that I had never seen at Carhullan before. I could not tell who was who under the woollen helmets. I knew Megan and Corky would be among them, stationed either in our dormitory or another. They ran through the motions of what seemed to be a well-planned ambush.

‘Give me a count?’ Jackie said. ‘All in,’ replied one of the unit. Jackie nodded and the women tipped their guns down a fraction and filed out. She held up her hands. ‘All right, ladies. Thank you for your cooperation. You’ve been very helpful. Sorry to disturb you. Try and get some rest now and I’ll go over all this with you tomorrow.’ She turned on her heel and left, closing the dormitory door behind her.

For a moment there was absolute quiet. Then people began groaning and swearing as they climbed back into bed. ‘What the hell was that about?’ I asked Nnenna. She looked distraught. She shook her head, rolled over and pulled a pillow over her face. I went to the door and opened it an inch. Out in the damp courtyard the cobblestones shone. There was nobody there, and the lights in the main house were off. It was as though nothing had happened.

The women complained into the early hours about the treatment and in the morning the yellow banner was taken out of the dresser and hung above the fire, and a meeting was called for that evening. I had lain awake a long time afterwards going over the details of the incident. It was the second time I had had a rifle trained on me by one of the Sisters. The first had been an empty threat, though I had not known it then. This time the weapons were of a different calibre; they looked heavy-duty and I wondered where they had come from, and whether they were loaded. I wondered why Jackie had chosen that night in particular to test us. I knew there was little she did without reason. I had not noticed the absence of those in her unit from the dormitory earlier on, and nothing had occurred in the main house at supper to indicate something was afoot. They must have gotten out of bed, I thought, without waking anyone, after Shruti had gone. Or perhaps it had all been staged from within. I felt less shaken and insulted than the others in the byre. I was used to Authority checks and searches. Instead I was curious about the purpose of the raid.

Breakfast was a sullen affair. As if in compensation, Ruthie put slices of ham and cheese out. No one said anything to Jackie when she entered the room and if she was braced for criticism she did not show it. She appeared pleased with herself. She stood under the yellow swatch hung on the lintel, eating a slice of the hock and some bread. Next to me on the bench, Chloe snorted. ‘God, look at her!’

That day we ran through the usual routines. My work group had moved from the gullies to the willow copse. As Shruti and I sawed through the trunks I asked her what she made of the drill. ‘Something’s going on for sure,’ she said. ‘Even before you got here it was like this, not as bad, admittedly. They weren’t kicking down the door in the middle of the night. And they aren’t just playing around either, like some people think. Jackie doesn’t play around.’ ‘So what is it?’ She winced and removed her gloves, gently rubbing a blister on her hand. I took a roll of tape out of my pocket and handed it to her. I watched her picking at the end of it, trying to get hold of the edge so she could wind it back. ‘Well, we’ll find out tonight, won’t we?’

Against the pale flaking tree-bark, in the low sun, she looked burnished and glossy from the outdoor air. I felt strongly towards her. It was not infatuation or yearning, like I had felt for Andrew and the other men I had slept with. But I felt close to her, an attraction that was complicated when I thought of it apart, but simpler when we were together, touching each other. She sometimes teased me, saying I was intrigued by the novelty of her, and underlying it was a gentle worry. I knew it was not so very different from what I had associated with love before.

Since the settlement we had been together a number times, in the dark storerooms, against the walls of the nearby cave where Carhullan’s mushrooms were grown in moss troughs and it smelled of underground spores and mould. We had gone wherever there was a private space, wherever we could undress enough, and not be heard. We had risked each other’s curtained berths once or twice at night, and the outdoor shower, and there the cold had not mattered as I cupped my fingers inside her. And in the warm drying room of the farmhouse, with the women’s wet clothes hung on wooden dollies around us, dripping steadily on the flagstones, she’d knelt over me, her tongue slow at first, then frantic as I pushed my hips towards her mouth.

I knew her body now. I knew that the burns on her skin felt like chalk. She was a soft-hearted woman and she had fallen for me. She’d looked after me through the violent sickness and aches of giardiasis, for ten days bringing me nettle teas and small dry pieces of bread, apologising all the while for letting me drink water from the croft barrel, and waving Lorry away when she approached my bed.

The temper she had once had was now held firmly in check, though when she came she clutched my hair and hissed my name. I knew she felt something more than just fondness for me, and I liked that. She had heard my own confessions, my account of life in the town with Andrew. But I hadn’t asked her history, whether it had included the men at the crofts or some of the Sisters. Whom she had last been with, and the crimes of her earlier life, did not matter to me. She had killed, but it was clear there was nothing of that fury left in her now.

The others were in another part of the spinney, tossing logs onto the wheelbarrow and barracking, but she lowered her voice when she next spoke. ‘Honestly? I think Jackie’s restless. It’s always better when there’s something for her to do, when there’s something going on. She wasn’t as hard-nosed when I first came here. She had Vee for company. She was more relaxed. It’s almost like she wants to start again, differently, you know?’

I sat on a tree stump. There was a fresh smell of sap. ‘She implied when I first came that the women should act differently, that we might need to.’ Shruti laughed. ‘Yeah, she implies that to everyone. Maybe it’s true. But. We’re still here, aren’t we?’ I nodded and bit the dry skin on my lip. ‘What do you make of her?’ I asked. ‘Who, Jackie? Well, she’s not crazy. I know that. No matter what some of them say about her when she’s not around to hear. She isn’t crazy. She should be though, she really should be. You’re very interested in her, Sister. Careful. I might start getting jealous.’ The tape creaked as she uncoiled the adhesive strip. I smiled at her. I knew now was my chance to find out more about Carhullan’s history. I decided to press her on the one subject I had so far been unable to broach with anyone else. ‘Nobody’s told me how Veronique died. I haven’t really asked. But it seems to be off limits.’

Shruti tore off a length of plaster, wrapped her finger with it, and passed me the roll back. She crouched on the ground in front of me and tucked her hands in the folds of her knees. ‘Yeah, I know,’ she said. ‘No one talks about it. I knew you were going to ask me. That’s what I get for being good to you, eh?’ She smiled sadly. ‘Vee got cancer. She found a lump. They knew what it was, straight away. But it was after the Reorganisation, and she wouldn’t go down into the town and ask for treatment. Jackie wanted her to, so did Lorry, but she said there was no point – they’d just be turned away and it might ruin things here in the process. None of us are listed on the census, we all made that choice – well, you already know that.’

She paused, untucked her hands, picked up a twig and snapped it. ‘They argued like mad and both were as stubborn as each other. God, the house practically came down around us all. I heard Jackie yelling at her upstairs once. She said she’d served her fucking country by killing as many sand niggers as the coalition wanted and now her country could serve her by keeping her nigger alive. Shit. You know how she talks. Well. This was one argument Vee won. They didn’t go.’ Shruti sighed. ‘It took about eight months for her to die. She was in agony. Lorry did everything she could. She even cut her open and tried to get it out, but you can’t treat something like that up here.’

She sighed again and blinked. Her eyes were bright with emotion. She swallowed uncomfortably and looked at the ground. ‘In the end Vee started begging. For them to help her finish it. She just kept asking, over and over, saying if they loved her they would help her. So they did. They carried her out to the Pins, because she loved that place, and they shot her. Jackie did it. Everyone was there. Everyone loved her, you see. She was an incredible woman. My God, she was so full of optimism. Nothing fazed her. Not even Jackie. I wish you’d met her. I really do.’

She put her hand into the debris of the copse floor as if searching for something under the brittle leaves and twigs. When she brought it out there was a small brown kernel on her palm. She dropped it. I knew she was finding it all too difficult, trying to compose herself. She took a deep breath and continued. ‘And Jackie … She kept hold of the gun. She wouldn’t put it down afterwards. We thought she wanted to kill herself too. There was that crackle around her, you know, that feeling you get when people are a danger to you, and to themselves. When anyone tried to take it from her she pointed it at them. Even Lorry. It took about a dozen people to get it off her. They knocked her out cold.’ She paused and swallowed again. ‘I’ve never seen love like that before. Never in my life. I know I couldn’t have done what she did. You see now why nobody talks about it.’

Shruti stood up abruptly and shook her head. There were tears spilling from the corners of her eyes. I stood as well, made a move to comfort her, but she waved me away and forced a smile. ‘I knew you were going to ask me,’ she said. She wiped her face with her gloves, picked up the saw and fitted it into the pale gash in the trunk. I took the other end and drew it back and forth with her. We worked in silence. I tried to concentrate on the task at hand but my mind would not cooperate. All I could see was a picture of myself, holding a gun to Shruti’s head and the redness in her spilling through her hair onto the ground. I let go of the saw and stood back. ‘That’s why people put those little idols out there by the stone circle, isn’t it? For Veronique?’ Shruti nodded. ‘Yes. Something like that.’

That evening, the meeting did not run with its usual smoothness and civility. For most of the day the women had been ruminating on the events of the night before, working themselves up about it. They were tired and they were shaken. Those who spoke out did so with anger, interrupting, chipping in over the top of one another, breaking the rules of the meeting.

Jackie stood beside the fire, listening to the comments of each woman who took the floor, and she did not object to the swell of voices, nor to the disorder. She nodded a couple of times whenever a new protest was shouted out. It was loud in the kitchen, and full of unrest, and she made a point of turning her left ear to the speaker, as if she was partly deaf and was trying to hear what was being said on her good side. It occurred to me that the scar on her face marked some internal damage. There was nothing of the previous night’s swagger about her, though she still wore her fatigues and stood tall, with her chin held high. Instead she seemed every bit the mediator, collecting up a list of grievances as if she might be planning to pass it on to an arbitrating body. But I could see she was acting a part, it was simply another rotation of her personality. Her eyes were focused on nothing and no one.

I did not know how she could stand there, confronted by so many angry women, and not be intimidated by them. At that moment she was colossal, more incredible than even the iron-jawed woman I had dreamed in the dog box. But the mystery of her was less profound now. Before, I had wondered what had gone into the creating of her. I knew her stock, her inheritance. She was part of the old North, the feuding territories, and those antagonistic genes rubbed in her, creating the friction that fired her pride. And perhaps her time in service had aggravated that configuration, contracting with it, organising it; eventually making her unbreakable.

But there was more to her than regional spirit and vocational strength. In a book she had lent me there had been a quote, written out in her own hand at the beginning of the first chapter.
It is not those who can inflict the most, but those who can
suffer the most that will conquer
. And I could see it now – the portion of her that had been immolated the day she pulled the trigger and took Veronique’s life. She carried a piece of dead self with her always, and still she lived, and it was this tumour, this mass, that gave her system the supreme immunity it had. It was this that gave her a shield, that she could better blunt her enemy’s sword, and drive in harder her own. She had killed her love with her lover, and cured herself of human weakness.