by Ann Kelley
‘How did you know about Freedom Farm?’
‘Mum had a friend who knew about it and we made a run for it, or rather, a walk and scramble! Took the coast path. Other women eventually arrived; we all helped build the camp.’
‘Why did they take Lo?’ It had been worrying him, that the women were supposed to be good but had kidnapped his sister. Hazel stood and began to walk along the beach, the wind tugging at the chain of sea pinks in her hair. Sid scrambled up and joined her.
‘She was alone in an old train carriage, wasn’t she? They saved her.’
‘But I was only gone for an hour.’
‘They weren’t to know that, were they? Storm said there was a disgusting old man hanging about. Anything could have happened to her. Storm was always looking for lost girls.’
‘Why only girls?’
‘She has – had – a theory – men were the root of all evil in the world – wars, weapons, technology, the Warming, The Emergency.’
‘But…’ Sid felt guilty without knowing why. Guilt about leaving Lo on her own; guilt by association. He couldn’t help being a boy, could he? It wasn’t his fault. Somehow the day was spoiled.
Oystercatchers piped as they flew across the darkening beach. Small waves fell and sucked at the pebbles, rolling them back and forth. Crows pecked at seaweed on the edge of the sea. A peregrine hovered above the cliff. Bats flitted across the beach.
Next day, Gaz went with Sid to Freedom, leaving Hazel in charge.
‘You best not go back there, my flower.’ Gaz told her. ‘You stay here and look after the little’uns.’
It was a relief for her not to go. She saw in her mind the dead bodies, smelt the burning flesh again, and shuddered. Hazel gave them a list of things to look for at the camp and where to find them. A sea-fret hung over the beach and the children wanted to stay indoors and play, but she shooed them outside. ‘A little rain won’t hurt you.’ While they were out of the way she tidied the hut, shaking the blankets of sand and washing their few clothes, humming to herself and clicking her tongue at the untidiness of men. She hung the dripping clothes on the washing line in the fine drizzle, and propped up the sagging line with a long pole with a notch in the top that Sid had whittled specially. She picked a bunch of late heather from the cliff behind the shack and squeezed them into a jar. Hopefully, Sid would bring back extra mugs and dishes from Freedom Farm. Freedom – she couldn’t bear to think about the terrible scenes they had fled from. Grief struck her suddenly and she sank to the floor and held her head in her hands. It was like that. She could go for a day or two without thinking about her mother and friends, and then, for no apparent reason, the loss came roaring back.
Sand and Pink made pebble patterns on the beach, but Sweetpea, cross about being made to go out in the rain, and unusually bold, ran off to be by herself on the far side of the cove, where she found a narrow path going up and away from the others. She plucked at daisies growing next to the path, and picked two small red berries and ate them. They didn’t taste very good but she pretended they were sweeties and ate another before spitting it out. She crouched and watched insects – a grasshopper rubbed its back legs together. A spider hid in the corner of a torn, sparkling web. She blew bubbles of spit and spat at a blue hoverfly. A young rabbit hopped nearby, nibbling at the sweet damp grass. It disappeared over the edge and she followed it. Leaning over to see where it had gone she slipped on the wet grass and fell.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
THEY CAME TO THE VALLEY of nut trees, filled a bag with hazelnuts and left it by a hedge to pick up on their return. The stink of smoke and death still hung like a grey veil or an autumn sea-fret. Sid hung back, nervous about going back to Freedom. Izzi ran ahead, curious, his muzzle lifted to sniff the smell of old smoke and other interesting scents.
‘Where are all the bodies?’ Sid stared around him.
‘Buried them.’
‘On your own?’
‘Who else was going to do it?’
‘I’d have helped if you’d asked.’
‘Yeah, well, not a job for a kid.’
‘I’m not a kid,’ Sid said angrily.
‘Keep your hair on, boy.’ Gaz grinned for the first time since he had lost Rose. Sid did have more hair these days; it was almost down to his shoulders.
Searching through the burnt-out vans they took what was left – a roll of linen and sewing cottons; a bag of rice, only slightly chewed by mice; a rolling pin, needles, scissors, a good carving knife, a block of salt and a flask of elderflower wine. Pots and pans, tin plates and mugs went into the sacks. They were getting heavy. Gaz swooped jubilantly on a large paintbrush, and Sid found a couple of tomato plants in pots that hadn’t been lost in the blaze.
A line of washing hung limp and blackened by smoke. Sid unpegged shorts, T-shirts, and underwear. They’d be all right after a couple of washes, he thought, and Hazel would be delighted to have more clothes.
To their amazement a chicken still stalked the woods, all alone, clucking to herself.
‘Didn’t see her before,’ said Gaz.
She ran to them, expecting food, and they caught her easily, tied her legs together and carried her with them, upside down. She didn’t seem to mind. She had laid several eggs but they weren’t sure how old they were, so they left them for rat and badger. She would lay more.
Sid came across the graveyard under the lime tree. Each mound of earth had a rock or a log at its head and the name of the dead marked in pebbles. A few limp nasturtiums lay on Rose’s grave. Sid realised that Gaz must have known these women well. The smaller mounds were of Hazel’s friends, the girls he had seen laughing with her.
He whistled for the dog. They staggered back over the moors with their burden of provisions, and stopped in the middle of the high moor to rest.
A cold easterly wind blew. A thin-faced vixen ran across the blustery field. Izzi watched the fox but made no attempt to chase after it.
A kestrel hung, quivering.
They arrived back at the cove, their arms aching from the heavy sacks and were met by a tearful Hazel.
‘I can’t find Sweetpea,’ she sobbed. I’ve searched everywhere.’
‘Where was she when you last saw her?’ Gaz was furious. Bleddy kids, nothing but trouble!
‘I don’t know. She was with the others.’ Her eyes were red from crying.
‘Where did she go, Lo-lo?’ Sid asked the unconcerned child.
‘Over there?’ She pointed vaguely in the wrong direction. ‘Anyway, she’s a pooey-face,’ and she went back to making pretend biscuits from limpet shells, while Sand tried to leap over a big sandcastle
‘Stay and watch them,’ Sid said to Hazel. She nodded, anxious to do the right thing.
They searched unsuccessfully for a while then Gaz gave Izzi one of the children’s blankets to sniff. The dog set off at a trot across the beach, followed closely by Sid and Gaz. Izzi wagged his tail and sniffed at the sand and pebbles. He nosed up the path that Sweetpea had taken and stood at the top barking wildly and wagging his tail. Gaz and Sid leaned over to look. The child lay on a ledge about twenty feet down, like a crumpled and broken doll.
‘Get a rope,’ ordered Gaz. ‘Don’t let them come up here.’
Sid ran back to the hut and took a coil of rope from a hook. He avoided Hazel’s eyes.
‘Have you found her? Is she hurt?’
‘She fell. Stay here.’ Hazel wrung her hands and sobbed. Lo and Sand were digging in the sand and making puddles of water in which they floated mussel shell boats.
They buried her above the beach of the next cove. It was a sorrowful group who sat around the fire that evening. Hazel was heartbroken, her face swollen and red.
‘It was my fault. I should have watched them better. I should have watched them.’ Sid didn’t know what to say to her.
After the death of Sweetpea, the others were subdued. Gaz kept himself to himself, getting on with chores without asking for Sid’s help. Sid didn’t know ho
w to comfort Hazel. She was inconsolable.
‘I’ll never forgive myself, never. I should have kept her safe. I never should have let them play by themselves.’
Sand was quiet and tearful, sleeping more than normal, but had formed an attachment to the hen, which she followed around, clucking to it.
Lo was the only one who didn’t seem affected by the death. She made elaborate sandcastles and decorated them with shells and weed. She played at dens in the boat in the cave, pretending that the Angel was there and she was looking after him. She spent hours prodding at the waving fronds of dark red anemones in little rock pools, hoping they would tug at her finger, and watching hermit shells walk. One day she found a pale blue starfish with a missing arm. Gaz told her it would grow another one, but she didn’t believe him.
‘If I lost an arm, would I grow another one?’
‘No, you wouldn’t.’
‘Why wouldn’t I?’
‘Because you wouldn’t.’
‘Will you grow another finger?’
‘No, I won’t.’
‘But if a starfish can do it, why can’t you?’
‘Oh my giddy aunt!’ Gaz stomped off with his fishing rod.
Helicopters were searching the moors behind them. They could hear the throb of the rotors. Izzi twitched his expressive ears at the hated noise. Sid took to keeping watch on the bluff above the beach, hiding in the thick bushes that grew by the stream. He noted the number of sorties the helicopters made and kept track of their journeys. It seemed to him that they were getting closer each day. Were they searching for Runners?
One day, he smelt the warm scent of bread coming from the farm cottage. He lifted his head like a dog sniffing out a rabbit. Izzi woofed.
The woman stood in her small front garden again, sprigs of rosemary in her hands.
‘Hello there,’ she called. ‘You all right, then?’
Sid was torn between his natural tendency to be polite and his loyalty to Gaz, who, he knew, didn’t talk to her. He nodded and looked away, embarrassed. She went back to searching the sky, listening to the helicopter. He didn’t feel safe at the beach any more. He found Gaz fishing from a rock.
‘I think we should move. We’re putting you at risk by being here. I’ll take the others somewhere else, move back to the roundabout.’
‘Right, lad, we’ve got to make plans.’
‘Plans?’
‘You still want to go to the island?’
‘Scilly? Yes!’
‘Right then. I’ll take you.’
‘Really? Would you really? Oh thank you, Gaz.’ He hugged the man fiercely, but Gaz shoved him off.
‘I’ll need to ready the boat.’
‘I’ll help. I’ll do anything you want.’
‘Yeah, you’re a good lad.’ Gaz sniffed and spat.
Sid was over the moon. This was the answer, sail to the island. See if they could survive there. Wanting to please Gaz, he asked, ‘Caught anything?’ He looked into the keep-net that dragged in the water.
‘Couple of big garfish.’ The man was pleased with the catch.
Sid said, ‘I like garfish.’
The eel-like fish with bright green bones was grilled that night on sticks over the fire. They sat round the embers in a small circle, and Sid told Hazel what had been decided.
Later, he couldn’t sleep for excitement and anxiety at the idea of setting off once again on yet another journey. Running.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
THEY TURNED THE BOAT upside down and scraped the barnacles off its bottom. Sid and Hazel patched small tears in the sail. Sid sanded off the flaking paint and retouched the hull with a small tin of varnish that Gaz had stored in the cave. Gas repainted the name, Girl Rose, slowly and carefully with red paint, admired his own handiwork, wiped his bleary eyes and coughed up phlegm.
He renewed some of the ropes, splicing new shanks onto the frayed bits. He retrieved some old plastic cans with stoppers from the cave, where he’d stored them for a rainy day, tied them together and shoved them before the mast for extra buoyancy. He scrubbed the rudder and centre plate.
‘She be ship-shape now,’ he said, regarding his craft. He had two proper lifebelts already, and he cobbled together three flotation belts from corks and plastic floats held together with cord. He stowed these beneath the thwarts. He checked that the hand pump was oiled and secured it under the fore-hatch with cord.
A sad-eyed man crouched on the bluff watching Gaz coming and going, busy with repairs to the boat. He had seen the children playing on the beach before this. He observed closely the preparations that were being made. He knew Gaz of old, had had dealings with him before, but he hadn’t spoken to him for years, not since they had fought over his wife. He’d heard that Gaz had had another woman since, a few miles away, but he and she had split up. He thought there had been a child, but he didn’t listen to gossip. Knowing Gaz, there was probably more than one. And when the Reduction began Gaz had left the hamlet to live on the beach. Since that time they had had no contact with him.
Washing the dishes after their supper, the farmer told his wife what he had seen. She knew about the children on the beach, of course. They all knew what was going on. News, especially bad news, travelled fast in the countryside. The people at the hamlet had heard of the destruction of the women’s camp. They were aware that Gascoigne was harbouring Runners. But they had lived in fear since The Emergency. They didn’t want to draw attention to themselves. So far, the TA and Reducers had left them alone since the year before, when all illegals had been taken away.
Grief was still raw for both of them. They cried together again over a photograph of their lost daughter and grand-daughter, who they had loved more than life itself. The woman sat on a lower bunk bed and rearranged the soft toys on the pillow, dreaming and crying softly. Next day they went back to the bluff and watched the children playing.
Gaz spotted them but made no sign.
He planned to sail on an outgoing tide at dusk, on a day when the wind blew in a favourable direction. It was a long way in a small boat, heavily loaded, sailing through dangerous waters, where larger vessels had come to grief over the years. He showed the boy the tattered map he still had. It was a chart of the waters between Land’s End and the islands. They weren’t sailing from Land’s End, but he felt pretty confident that he could find his way there in the dark from the cove.
‘They look very small.’ Sid was surprised at the small dots that were the islands. ‘How do we know which one still exists?’ He was beginning to wonder whether it had been such a good idea.
‘I’ll get you there, don’t you fret,’ said the man, carefully folding the taped-together, fragile chart that he had managed to stick onto another piece of paper to strengthen it.
The day before the voyage the farmer and his wife visited the cove. Izzi woofed quietly.
‘Someone’s coming, Gaz.’
‘What do they want?’ the man said, bad-temperedly.
‘Good morning Gascoigne.’
Gaz grunted.
‘Wouldn’t bother you, only we have a plan,’ said the farmer, dropping the sack full of provisions they had brought – cake, honey, beets, potatoes, biscuits and dried beans. He had an angular brown face, weathered by sea winds, lined with sorrow. His eyebrows were bushy and grey, though his hair was still youthfully black and his eyes were clear blue. ‘Here’s our idea. We’ll take the little girls and look after them as if they were our own.’
Gaz, Sid, Hazel and the little girls stood silent. It was an unexpected development.
‘But don’t you want to come in the boat to the island with us?’ Hazel asked Lo and Sand.
‘Me don’t like boats,’ said Sand.
‘I want to go with Sid and Hazel,’ said Lo, grabbing Sid’s hand as if he was about to leave her there and then.
‘Wasn’t there another one?’ asked the woman.
‘Fell off the cliff,’ said Gaz, quietly.
Hazel started to sob.
/>
‘Oh, my dear Lord, come here, my flower.’ The woman held her and tried to comfort her.
‘Can you keep Sand safe?’ Hazel asked, sniffing back the tears.
‘Yes, we can. As if she was one of our own.’ She was a good-looking woman with white wiry hair, a determined mouth and gentle brown eyes.
‘What do you think, Sand? Would you like to stay with …? I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.’
‘Stella, she’s called Stella. She’ll take care of her,’ said Gaz, not looking directly at the woman.
‘We’ve got a cat that just had three kittens.’ The farmer, whose name was James Craze, crouched down so that he was at Sand’s level and smiled at her.
That did it. The child nodded shyly and took his hand. Lo was tempted by the idea of a kitten, but she had Izzi, so she didn’t mind. And anyway, she wouldn’t dream of leaving Hazel and Sid.
‘What about you, then, my maid?’ The farmer looked at Hazel. ‘You can come and live along of us if you like.’
‘No, thank you, I want to go with Sid.’ She went to him and took his hand.
Sid’s heart soared. He grinned from ear to ear.
After half an hour of further preparations for the voyage, the Crazes helped Gaz and Sid push the loaded boat into the water.
‘Safe journey.’
Sand stood between them on the beach, holding the clucking hen, and waved. Izzi barked back at them from the stern of Girl Rose.
‘Be good, be safe,’ called Lo to Sand.
Hazel had an emotional parting with Sand, but the small child was callous as only young children know how to be. She had been promised a proper bedroom with bunk beds, pictures on the walls, pink curtains, kittens and toys. What more could she possibly want? And she had no idea of time and distance, no idea that maybe she would never see Hazel again, but Hazel knew and was sad. Above them on the bluff, the rest of the hamlet’s survivors were watching and wishing them God-speed.
Gaz sailed towards the setting sun, taking their bearings along the coastline, keeping the boat close to the cliffs, but far enough out so that they weren’t drawn onto the rocks. The sea was quiet. The wind was not too fierce, but strong enough to speed them along in the gathering gloom. They passed a group of ancient engine houses on the cliff edge, tall ruined towers, like broken teeth.