The Carhullan Army (23 page)

At night I would examine my feet, check that the bubbling mass of blisters was not infected, and each morning I would place the swabs of gauze we had been given between my toes. There were raw galls on my shoulders and lower back from the rubbing of the bergen straps. By the end of the three weeks I was carrying half my own weight, and I had begun to realise what a matchless device the human body was.

On the morning of the final march we gathered in the courtyard and waited for instruction as usual. I was barely awake and exhausted from the previous marches. Jackie came out, dressed in a military coat, and greeted us. ‘Long drag today,’ she said. ‘It’s an ordeal and it’s meant to be, so make sure you pace yourselves. I don’t want to have to bury any of you. Or feed you to the dogs.’ There was nervous laughter. She jerked her head to the side. ‘Now, don’t thank me, ladies, but I’ve a special bonus for you. Come this way.’

We followed her to one of the stone bothies. I had not been into it before. It was always padlocked and bolted. She took a key from the pocket of her fatigues and turned it in the lock; the hasp sprang back slickly and she pulled open the latches. She turned on the light. Before us there were stacks of stencilled metal boxes. Jackie stepped forward, hefted one down, and opened it. Inside, as I had known there would be, were the rifles. She handed one to each woman, and with it an ammunition pouch filled with heavy brass fobs. When it came to my turn, she opened another case, lifted out my father’s gun and smiled. I looked at the bad side of her face, the inert cleft running from her mouth to her ear. Then I took the rifle from her. It had been scoured of rust and repaired, and I knew it was still accurate enough to snipe deer.

There were no straps attached to any of the weapons. We were to carry them at all times, Jackie told us. Anyone seen putting their gun down en route would run the course again tomorrow. And again the day after if they dropped it. ‘And be warned, I’ll be coming along shortly to keep you company,’ she said. ‘Like the red light of morning.’

I set out, my bag full, the rifle in one hand, and the weighted pouch in the other. As the sun was rising Jackie cantered past on one of the fell ponies. ‘Who’s sticky now, Sister?’ she called down to me, and laughed.

We had been given twenty-four hours to cover forty miles. We would make six circuits of the High Street range and we would walk through the night in darkness, tracking our way along the escarpment. It was the same distance as my journey from Rith to Carhullan. I had been told by the patrol then that it was impossible for me to have walked it all, and they had been right. This time I would prove them wrong.

*

There was no mutiny at Carhullan. If Jackie had anticipated there might be, and had moved her original unit into the house to protect herself, she need not have worried. There was no one to challenge her. And, under whatever law there was now, the place was hers. No one else could have held it together as she did. I was surprised so many of the women decided to go along with her plan. Deep down I had thought myself unusual, perhaps maligned with some kind of unnatural antagonism or need for leadership, for wanting to act in a way I had been programmed to think was wrong. But eighteen in all came forward. The older women in the colony were largely exempt. Jackie needed Ruth and Lorry and an experienced core of others in their original capacities. The farm had to keep ticking over, even if it was to be less a farm than a support system for the soldiers within.

A small group refused to train. Jackie respected their wishes as she had said she would, and she promised that when the time came she would escort them to one of the Pennine towns and see to it that they were set up, given a section number, and camouflaged from the Authority. Shruti was among them. We still spoke and often sat beside one another on the bench for meals, but we no longer met up alone, no longer sought each other out as we once had. Since the night of Jackie’s announcement we had not slept together, and though I was still attracted to her I knew it was for the best. I did not tell her what I was doing with the unit, and she did not ask. Our company seemed defined by a gentle sadness now, as if we had never really had the opportunity to fall out of love, and everything begun had been curtailed instead of aborted.

I might have walked away completely, avoided her around the farm, to make it all easier, for myself at least, attempting to convert the relationship into a mistake in my head. But she made a point of maintaining a bond. She offered to wash my clothes with hers, left flowers on the crate next to my bunk. There was more grace in her than I could have managed, and without hers I would have found none. It brought a gentle ache to my chest to have her hug me at the end of a dinner shift and then walk away to her bed, or rest a hand on my shoulder and ask if I was faring OK when she saw my cuts and bruises, my newly shaved head.

We could have made passes at each other and it would have ended with our limbs tangled again, our bodies spilling outwards, wet and arching. And if she had come to me with that in mind I would not have stopped it or pushed her away, though I knew Jackie would disapprove. Shruti held back, as I did. Instead, she offered me a quiet, spiritual friendship.

I returned from training one morning to find a small velvet bag on the bed. My fingers were staved with the cold and filthy, two of the nails were black, and I struggled to draw back the slender cord pinching the bag closed. I tipped its contents into my palm. It was an Edwardian necklace with green, white, and violet stones. I knew it had been Veronique’s, and it had come into Shruti’s possession after her death, when all her belongings had been shared out. In the bag, on a tiny scrap of paper, she had written a note.
The day will come. Be strong
. I did not know what to say when I saw her that evening, and so I said nothing, just smiled at her across the kitchen, and then went into the parlour room where Corky, Megan, and the others were drinking.

I tried not to think about the times we had been together. But I know I felt more for her after we had separated than in the weeks of our fervour and discovery. She was a revelation to me. And if it had not been for the teachings of Jackie Nixon, hers would have been the most profound lessons of my time at the farm.

Carhullan was not perfect. If it had once been close to it, running to a high level of courtesy and enlightenment, a society that celebrated female strength and tolerance, the balance had now tipped back. There were arguments between those in the unit and those still running the farm, who thought they now carried an unfair burden of work, that they were at the bottom of the hierarchy. Some in the other group continued to try to talk Jackie down from her position during the evening meetings, and she began to tire of it.

Chloe remained outspoken on the subject. ‘How do we know if what you say is true, Jackie?’ she would ask. ‘Where’s the proof of it, other than your word? I’ve seen no Authority monitors here yet. Has anyone else? You’re just hell-bent on this conflict. And you’re dragging everyone else along with you.’ Then she would turn on the room. ‘Why don’t you all wake up and see what she’s doing! Do you really think she can sneak little Stella back into town without anyone noticing?’ There was a zealousness to her when she talked, a desperation. Often she would work herself into a frenzy and storm out of the room, go looking for her husband in the stables. Jackie would close the door softly behind her.

The gatherings were finally suspended. I knew we were as guilty of failure and disunity as any other human society. I knew we were as defective.

The men did not belong. Though they had taken over some of the roles left open by those gone over to Jackie, they still ate their food separately and kept to themselves. They served their purpose, but their proximity seemed to engender discomfort in those who had never imagined they would have to share Carhullan with them. Dominic, Ian and the boys had offered to train with us, but Jackie turned them down, saying the dynamic of the group would be thrown out of whack. She did not want men in her army.

I began going to Calum. After joining the unit I went to him a few times, nights when I felt too tense to sleep in my bunk, or if I had drunk enough home brew not to care. I went after an exercise with the equipment, when the strange elation of accuracy, of lethality, lit me, made me want someone, and I went after the sickeners, to get rid of the images and echoes of what I’d seen and done in training; the forelegs of the dog we had killed splayed limp at its sides, the click of the knife slitting its windpipe and its ligaments.

He was obliging. He had chosen his own role and he fulfilled it whenever necessary. I knew he was essentially in Jackie’s pay, that he was given tobacco by her, and a secure place within the community, on the understanding that he would let any of her women fuck him if they wanted to. That he would continue to offer them excitement and relief, as he had always done. I knew he was the father of at least two of the children at Carhullan, Stella included. But there were no pregnancies now. He controlled himself, and kept himself clean. Jackie wanted no disease to infect her women, rendering them unfit.

Calum’s body was smooth and slim. His ribs jutted through his flesh and his hair reached past his shoulders. We did not kiss. He held my hips as I moved over him; he did what I told him. His grey eyes remained focused. He was an accomplished lover, compliant, and he knew what movements and words might kindle arousal in those seeking it. The pleasure from him was physical and limited. Those first few times on his pallet bed, I had closed my eyes and thought of Shruti. I saw her kneeling in front of me, circling her tongue until my nerve endings began to clench and spasm, or I thought of her eyes glazed over, her pupils dilated and staring into mine when she climaxed. And then, when I knew it was better not to keep her as a memento in such a way, when I knew I had to let her go, I blocked out those pictures of her dark body. I saw nothing but fragments.

*

The women new to the unit grew fitter. The marches continued. We were posted outside in holes overnight, told to keep still for days on end in bunkers dug below the heather banks. The women suffered hypothermia, sleep deprivation, strained tendons, boredom. We took on board whatever was instructed. The first rule of orienteering was to memorise all relevant coordinates. The second was never to fold the maps any other way but along their creases. Give nothing about the operation away, Jackie said. We were taught infantry skills, combat survival, basic medical knowledge. The hikes became longer, up over ice stacks on the summits, the bluffs along the ridge, and into the surrounding valleys.

In Ullswater there were groups of Unofficials living around the lake, and in the big empty houses. They looked ragged and poorly equipped. Breathing slowly, we tracked them through the iron sights of the rifles. We loaded the magazines in silence. Most of the guns were old; they had been used for army training before Jackie got hold of them, and there were only a handful of modern rifles with SUSATs that could be mounted for surveillance. This did not matter, she told us. We still had the upper hand – surprise. But we would need to prepare ourselves for strategic assassination.

In the locked storage room she had a twelve set of automatic pistols, three Barrett rifles, light mortars, grenades, and enough explosive to take out those constructions upon which the Authority depended and the people were held to. The butcher’s bill would be kept to a minimum. No civilian would be intentionally hurt. In time she would teach us the handling of everything she had stowed away, all the armaments she had acquired, through whatever underground network, whatever solicitous means. She was careful not to waste live rounds, frugal with the reserves of diesel for the Land Rover and the decommissioned Bedford. To get close to Rith we used the ponies, and kept under the cover of darkness once the domestic grid went out, moving like raiders around the periphery.

I enjoyed riding the ponies. They were compliant and hardy creatures, and they tackled the rough ground, the steep gradients and swollen waterways, with stamina and surefootedness. I had never been nervous around horses. I had always been able to approach them in the fields around Rith, and I found that I was a comfortable rider. I fitted and felt right with the animals. It was apparent that Jackie had a genuine passion for the ponies. Once or twice she rode out along the range with me. When we got back to the farm she complimented my skill. ‘You’re good at this, Sister. They recognise confidence and loyalty: I trust those my ponies trust.’ She told me that, years ago, her family had been breeders. ‘The mountains made them naturally small,’ she said to me, patting the dark glistening flanks of the mare she was unsaddling. ‘The Romans broke them first, up at the Wall. They crossbred them. They were used as pack animals back then. But we made them fast. It was us who raced them. And now, they’re going into battle.’

By the end of spring we had been taught which plants and roots were edible, which could keep us alive longer up on the fells, and which were purgative. The upland snows had thawed and the rivers were high and fast, full of meltwater and dirt. The unit was given a new test of fitness.

On the banks of Swinnel Beck, Jackie stripped out of her clothes and stood naked in front of us. Megan, Corky and the others who were familiar with the drill followed suit. I saw Jackie’s body for the first time. It had been heavily employed over the years, put through exertions since she was seventeen years old, and it showed. She was full-breasted, and her nipples were damson red, but the rest of her seemed to be made of wire and tightly stretched bands. Spurs of bone pressed up against the skin at her joints. There were deep dimples in her shoulders, craters within the sinew, and across her back were a series of dark purple circles.

She picked up her rifle and an ammunition pouch, lifted them above her head, and strode into the brown racing water until it took her off her feet. Then she swam across, her head ducking under the current a few times, gasping as she surfaced. The thin dark hair lengthened around her shoulders and covered her face. She climbed out of the river, thirty feet downstream but safe on the opposite bank, and the sound that left her mouth was feral. One by one we went into the river after her. I felt the cold burn of the water as I stepped into the torrent, felt it pulling me along as I struggled into the depths.