“I’ve got quite a good range of books on my reader,” I told him. “I can read them aloud, if you like.”
He brightened.
“Not all the time,” he said firmly. “It’s not the same for you. But if you could, now and then, that would be great.”
The post-exercise change back into our own clothes complete, Jonathan’s new dormmates proceeded to mob him for the rest of the afternoon. Some, like Sarah and Bethan, were just friendly, some were curious, others, like Jane and Rebecca and Annie, were obviously determined to get him in bed with them. He was friendly to everyone, in that rather cool, polite way of his.
Jane was undeterred. When everyone was getting ready for bed and Jonathan emerged from his bunk to go to the washroom, she grabbed him by the front of his pajama bottoms and tried to pull him towards her. When he didn’t deign to be pulled, she plastered her leggy self against him instead.
“Well, Jonathan, would you care for me to join you in your lovely private bunk tonight?”
Jonathan found her shoulders and put her firmly to one side. She resisted, but his muscles didn’t appear to notice.
“No, thank you, Jane. I’m still taking stock of just what’s on offer. There doesn’t seem to be any need for me to rush in and accept anything but the very best, does there?”
Jane flushed crimson and a lot of people giggled. Jane’s tongue was always stinging someone.
“So what do you like?” Annie and Caroline bounced up to Jonathan as he tried again to reach the door. “Tell us what you like in a girl and we’ll rank everyone in order, how’s that!”
“That’s very kind of you,” said Jonathan, less nastily, “but I think this is the sort of ranking one has to do for oneself.”
“But… how will you know what kind of legs everyone has?” asked Harriet, looking baffled. “Should we line up and let you feel them?”
She said it so innocently I choked on a snort of laughter and turned my back hastily, so she wouldn’t think I was mocking her. Not too quickly to miss the wonderful expression on Jonathan’s face, though!
“You’re all being so very kind to me,” he said, after a long moment. “But the legs aren’t really my top priority. As you so rightly observe—it doesn’t mean much to me.”
“Oh.” Harriet looked blank. “How are you going to decide who’s best, then?”
“Oh, I’m sure I’ll think of something,” murmured Jonathan, heading for the door.
Jane stuck her foot out, but he stepped over it. I was starting to suspect he could hear a pin drop. Literally, on this hard floor.
There it was—a near-as-never-mind garden shed plonked down next to the gardeners’ hut. I veered up to the fence, peering anxiously through the mesh.
“Oh, excuse me? Er… sir? Um, sirs?” My voice was not very audible over the speakers; no one nearby looked around but the soldiers did.
“What is it, young miss?” called back the older of the two.
“Well, it seemed a bit odd, is the thing. And I wasn’t sure I shouldn’t tell someone… but…”
The soldier began to walk towards me.
“What seemed odd?”
The younger soldier followed his partner, though from the way he was staring at my legs, it wasn’t interest in what I had to say that’d brought him over.
“…therefore, with no further ado, it is my great honor to present to you tonight, our most esteemed Chairman…”
My second cue.
“There was this man. He climbed over the fence—well, there’s loads of couples doing that, but it was just him on his own. And then he headed off in the direction of the stage…” All perfectly true. If at sixteen Bane was old enough to be press-ganged—or executed—why shouldn’t I refer to him as a ‘man’?
Both soldiers closed the distance to me in a few long strides as the Chairman began to speak.
“Was he carrying anything?” demanded the older one, already reaching for the walkie-talkie at his belt.
“What sort of thing?”
The two men exchanged a ‘how dumb can you get’ look.
“Anything,” demanded the younger one. “Was he carrying anything at all?”
“This is E4 calling base; over.” The older one had the walkie-talkie to his lips. Not waiting to extract any more details from a dumb bimbo who might or might not actually be blonde in the daylight.
“Base; over,” spluttered the walkie-talkie.
There was a strange ‘whump’ noise from the shed, followed, before the guards could even finish spinning around, by several cracks and bangs. Something red punched through the shed roof and exploded, flooding the clearing with a technicolor of sparks. Flickering orange light glowed through the hole in the roof and more bangs followed in quick succession.
“Someone’s setting off the fireworks!” yelled the younger soldier quite unnecessarily as they both lurched towards the shed… only to think better of it.
Yes! Go, Bane!
Then the shed exploded.
The pursuit of the male of the species continued unabated the following day. If only Jonathan would choose someone and make it clear he intended to be monogamous—anything less and this ridiculousness would just go on and on and on! Harriet, Caroline and Annie—and some of the others—spent ages dressing their best, applying their makeup and then walking up and down near Jonathan. Even Rebecca rolled her eyes and snorted derisively.
“For pity’s sake!” snapped Jane eventually, as the parade trooped too close to her. “He’s blind. Blind. He cannot see you. You’re wasting your time, you’re pissing everyone off, and you look like idiots.”
The group teetered to an uncertain halt in their high heels.
“But… how else do we make him like us?” one of them said, sounding close to tears.
“You can’t. He’s got three times your IQ and five times your looks. Give up.”
“And yet I like them so much better than big-headed, smart girls,” put in Jonathan coldly, from his seat at the table. Several incipient sobs morphed into giggles.
I stared at my pad and tried to concentrate on the exploits of my Fellest ewe, but Sarah was soon beside me.
“Sheep? Sheep story?”
Time for Diary of a Fellest Ewe, part one.
I’d collected quite a crowd by the time I finished reading—Jonathan among them.
“That’s very good,” he told me.
I shrugged.
“It’s just a fun little story.”
“Yes. A very good one.”
I shrugged again.
“What are your talents, then? Other than hearing people moving.”
He smiled faintly and didn’t deny it.
“Hearing and touch are about it, to be honest. My parents read books to me as much as they could—let me learn what I wanted mostly, so I’m a little lopsided. I like physics most of all, but I’ve never done any. There aren’t many opportunities nowadays if you’re blind.”
“Nowadays?”
“Umm. Once upon a time they had a language called Braille that blind people could read and write in, and dogs to help them go around on their own. Before the EuroGov took control and Sorting began, they were even developing a pair of goggles that sent electrical signals to the tongue so a blind person could sorta see.”
“That’s amazing.”
“Yep. ‘Course, the project was scrapped when the EGD came into being. Judged unnecessary. After all, adults who go blind can have replacement parts, and blind children are replacement parts.”
“Idiots.”
“Umhmm. Seeing’s not something I’ve ever sat around and dreamt about, though. But a pair of goggles like that might be useful, just for new places. New places are a pain.”
“I bet they are.”
We’d all watched him the day before as he walked slowly up and down the room, up and down, his stick touching gently against chairs and tables and obstacles. He must’ve remembered it all, because he’d only walked the place once. He’d pressed the
buzzer and got the guard to let him out into the passage, and he’d learned that, and the washrooms. ‘Not hard,’ he’d snorted, ‘it’s all the same as over there, just backwards.’
“Braille would be nice, though,” he concluded.
“I imagine. You can write, though?”
“Oh, yes. Carefully.” His face fell. “Well... That is, I had this special frame my dad made me years ago—helps me write in straight lines—but the boys smashed it to smithereens. Don’t know how well I’ll manage without it...”
“Well, I can play scribe, if you like.”
“Would you mind? I might really appreciate that.”
“’Course not...”
“Hi, Jonathan!” Annie dropped into a nearby chair. “Can I talk to him now, Margo?”
I tried not to smile.
“That’s up to him.”
“Oh, yeah. Can I speak to you now, Jonathan?”
“‘Course. You’re Annie, right?”
I went back to part two of my story.
One moment the shed was there—a blinding flash, an ear-splitting crack and it was gone. Something picked me up and flung me backwards, slamming me into the ground so hard I just lay, too shocked to move, as debris pattered down all around.
When it stopped raining steaming charcoal and bits of wood that glowed like embers, I pushed myself up on my hands and stared at the smoking crater where the shed had been. The two guards had been smacked into the fence by the blast—they were just sitting up and beginning to disentangle themselves from each other and the buckled mesh.
It was the older one who suddenly looked across at me.
“Hey, you! Wait right there!”
Pretending not to hear, I grabbed my hat and staggered to my feet, requiring no acting ability whatsoever to do what most other people were doing—scream at the top of my voice and run away. What was difficult was to run away from the blast. Because Bane must surely be dead.
Too close. He must’ve been far too close... I raced along the field, my heart pounding and everything oddly frozen in my mind, as though only Bane could thaw it. That ‘whump’ had been the sound of some flammable fluid igniting and that meant… too close, far too close!
Reaching a quieter, darker stretch of fence, I lunged up at it in hopeless impatience, but I wasn’t strong enough to just pull myself over, the way Bane did. Dragging off my ankle wellies, I chucked them over and tackled the fence again. My toes just fitted between the mesh and it was a quick, if rather painful, climb to the top. My feet sank into the grass, icy damp soaking my socks as I found the wellies and dragged them back on.
I wouldn’t find Bane along the fence line where guards would be moving around... I dashed through the huts and plunged into the strip of undergrowth beyond, holding my hands out in front of me to fend twigs from my eyes, scanning the dark ground for branches that might trip me or break noisily underfoot... I wanted to shout his name, but I held my tongue. I wasn’t going to be the one to tell them who’d blown up their fireworks.
About halfway to the gardeners’ hut, I skidded to a halt at the sound of someone crashing through the undergrowth towards me. Made my efforts sound very stealthy indeed. I crouched still and quiet behind some brambles...
Bane burst into a patch of dim moonlight, weaving erratically through the bushes.
Alive! He was alive!
Laudate Dominum.
I glanced at Jonathan, who stared into space as always, his chin resting on his hand. His latest group of conversants had just giggled their way back to their bunks and he was—temporarily, I’m sure—alone. Other than me, sitting there finishing part two. I’d a niggling desire to talk to him about Bane, but Jane’s scathing words the day before had made me hold my tongue, hoping he’d bring the subject up himself. But…
“How did Bane used to get out to Little Hazelton?” I asked abruptly.
“His mum works there.” Jonathan smiled faintly.
“Yeah, I know that, but if you’re telling me he was still getting lifts with her for the last few years, I’ll call you a liar.”
Jonathan grimaced.
“Too true. He was jumping trains, actually.”
“What? The hypocritical rat!”
“You disapprove?”
“It’s not that! But he made me promise I wouldn’t do it any more!”
“I remember something about that. You used to do it all the time, when you were younger, right?”
“Yes. It was a favorite pastime for us. Bike up one side of the valley and jump on the trains as they come over the top of the pass, they’re going at their slowest then. Ride all the way through Salperton and to the top of the next pass, then jump off and catch the next train back from the other direction. I take it Little Hazleton’s also near a pass?”
“Yes.”
“Honestly, so much for, ‘it’s too dangerous’.”
“You jumped the wrong train one day, didn’t you?” From the sparkle in his eyes, he’d heard all about it from Bane.
“Yeah. It was a total accident, but we tried to get on the nuclear waste train from Coldwell. The guards opened fire on us and we almost got shot. Well, to be honest, I did get shot. But it was only a nick.”
“Bleeding to death in his arms, the way Bane tells it,” grinned Jonathan.
I snorted.
“I was not. He might’ve had my arm around his shoulders, but that’s all. My parents never even found out. Look… I mean… feel.”
I pushed my sleeve up and placed his fingers on my upper arm. He traced the smooth indented scar with his fingertips.
“A good sized nick,” he said measuredly, “but yeah, I’d agree with nick as the correct definition.”
“He really freaked out about it, though. Refused ever to take me train-jumping again. And he’s been doing it himself all these years.”
“You don’t actually sound very surprised,” smiled Jonathan. “Or indignant.”
I had to laugh.
“I s’pose I know him too well to be surprised. Hearing he’s still doing it himself makes me more worried than anything. He doesn’t seem to have any fear for himself at all. I sometimes wonder if he got killed, if he’d even care.”
“Or just be angry about it,” said Jonathan softly, not contradicting me. “Yeah.” He was silent for a moment, then asked, very quietly, “Anyway, is there anyone nearby?”
“Uh, no. But you know that, don’t you?”
“Yes. But I wanted to be certain. Can anyone see this hand of mine?” He wriggled the fingers of the hand that lay in his lap.
“Hmm. No.”
“Absolutely certain?”
“Yes.”
“No mirrors?”
I checked again.
“No. Between your body and the table it’s completely hidden.”
“Good.” He dropped his voice even lower and his finger and thumb curved into the Fish. “Salve, soror.”
Hello, sister.
***+***
10
THE FIRST LETTER
I grabbed his hand, automatically replying in Latin.
“Careful!”
“You said no one can see.”
“I didn’t know you were going to do that!” Caution belatedly reasserted itself and I switched back to English. “Why are you showing me that, anyway?”
“Margo.” He rolled his eyes slightly. “Bane...”
“Seems I need to have a little chat with my fiancé about discretion.”
“Bane trusts me, he hasn’t done anything wrong.”
“Huh.” He’d gone straight back into Latin and I replied in the same. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“I wanted to form my own opinion of you. I’d trust Bane’s judgment with my life, yes. But other people’s lives?”
I shrugged.
“Fair enough. Why didn’t you go underground, though? Why show up for Sorting?”
“Why’d you?” he said, smiling.
“My parents run a Mass center,” I
said, very softly indeed, Latin or not, “but I imagine you know that already.”
“Yes. Well, mine run a safe house. So I was in the same position as you.”
“Ah… a hotel. Perfect cover!”
“Absolutely. It’s an all-stream safe house. Quite important. Not worth closing down for the sake of one blind boy.”
“I bet your parents didn’t think that.”
“No, but I did. How would the Underground keep me hidden, anyway? I’m a little noticeable. They’ve enough to do protecting the priests and rabbis and everyone like that.”
Priests. Uncle Peter. I looked at Jonathan’s cheerful face. He didn’t know what’d happened. I could scarcely get it out of my mind. I had to tell him… Some other girls had just sat at a table nearby, so I went back to English. “Jon… I had an uncle called Peter; did you ever meet him?”
He turned his head a little more squarely towards me with sudden attention.
“Peter? An… uncle?”
“That’s what I always called him.”
“I think I may have done; why do you ask?” His face clouded. “What do you mean, had an uncle?”
“I think you know what I mean,” I said softly, then pretended to change the subject although no one appeared to be listening. “Oh, did you hear what the Menace made us watch the other day?”
He sat there, very very still.
“What did the Menace make you watch?” he whispered.
“A… full conscious dismantlement. It was… horrible.” My voice shook—I could hardly get the words out.
He didn’t say anything. He just sat there, his face frozen and his nostrils flaring now in hurt rather than sensitivity.
“Damn,” he said at last, with unusual feeling. And after another long, long silence, “Bitch!”
“Yeah,” I whispered, hardly trusting myself to speak. “Bitch.”
“Bane!”
Bane stumbled on, staggering into one bush after another. I sprang out and he started violently, fists rising, then dropping as he recognized me. I realized the soft noise he was making was laughter.
I Am Margaret Page 10