by Robin Jarvis
“I can’t believe she had me fooled. That’ll learn me.”
It was two more days before Jody was deemed fit enough to join the work parties. Then, for the first time, she was sent out with the others. Many hours later, when they returned, she was a walking wreck, having fainted twice and thrown up on the return journey.
That night another postcard was slipped under Jangler’s door.
My dear Lockpick,
I think it’s time you made life a shade more intolerable here for us dirty aberrants. My patience is wearing thin. The Castle Creeper must be flushed out. Make us suffer, make us howl in anguish, make us wish we were dead.
AF
MAGGIE HAD BEEN sleeping poorly. The hostile, toxic atmosphere of her cabin was unbearable and getting worse. They had tried and convicted her and refused to listen to reason. Only the stupefying effect of the Bakelite device gave her troubled mind any respite. The next morning there were rips in the carpet and long scars splintered the wall by the door. Something large and savage had come through in the night.
Maggie didn’t have time to notice. She awoke later than usual and dashed straight to the kitchen. When she got there, Anchu was ready to scream at her. Then the guard squawked with laughter and Esther joined in.
Maggie didn’t understand until she saw her reflection in the polished steel of the work surfaces. Whilst she had been sleeping, someone had drawn on her face with black felt tip. Maggie now bore an uneven moustache, round spectacles and the rest of her skin was peppered with dots.
Hurt and humiliated, she tried to scrub it off in the sink, but that only made her face red and sore. The ink would not budge and she looked even sillier.
Anchu thought it was hilarious and rolled around laughing, stopping only to take the plate of cooked sausages away for the other Punchinellos. Esther kept sniggering to herself.
“It’s a massive improvement, you fat traitor,” she said.
Maggie said nothing but made her mind up to change huts. She’d ask Jangler for permission to move into Charm’s. She’d had enough. What else might they do to her? She couldn’t stand it any more.
When the soup was ready and she could hear the others assembling in the dining hall, she took a deep breath and went in with the bowls.
The surprised silence only lasted a moment. Then everyone from her hut, Alasdair’s and Esther’s banged the tables and laughed at her.
Charm ran across but Maggie didn’t want the proffered hug. She just wanted to get this over with. Marcus and Lee stood up and their fierce expressions quelled every voice.
“Who did it?” Marcus demanded, glaring at Jody.
The girl shrugged, a shadow of a smile on her lips.
“You think the fact you’re a girl will stop me belting you?” he said. “Think again, cos it won’t. I’ll smack that look right off your face.”
Alasdair rose from his seat. “Don’t you lay a finger on her!” he warned.
“What you going to do about it, Jock?” Marcus snapped back at him. “Not much use with a crippled hand, are you? Plant yourself back down!”
Alasdair kicked the chair away and came around the table. Marcus clenched his fists and was more than ready, but Lee moved in between.
“Do like he said and sit,” he told Alasdair.
“You’d really take yon dickhead’s side?” the Scot asked.
“You’re the dickhead,” Lee said. “You’re so full of prejudice and spite, you ain’t thinking straight. This is not you speaking. You wouldn’t have been like this a week ago. Sit down or I’ll knock you to the floor and save Marcus the trouble.”
“Go on then, try it!”
“You better pray I don’t, cos you know what happens when I start and there’s no one here strong enough to stop me.”
“Oh, please!” Jody interrupted with a contemptuous snort. “Cut the tedious macho stand-off. You don’t impress no one. Little boys playing at being hard.”
“Keep your gob shut!” Marcus told her. “You’re a bitter, ungrateful, butter-faced cow!”
“Dinnae speak to her like that!” Alasdair shouted back at him.
“Why don’t you grow a pair? She’s got you standing on your head. She’s loving it, look at her! Finally getting some attention at last.”
They were on the verge of a vicious brawl when a small voice piped up.
“I did it. I drew on her.”
They turned. Christina was holding up a felt-tip pen. She stuck out her chin proudly.
“How about belting a seven-year-old girl?” Alasdair goaded Marcus. “Make you a real man that would, eh?”
“No one’s belting anybody,” Maggie announced. She approached Christina and crouched at her side. “Why did you do it?” she asked gently. “I’ve not done anything to you. I’ve not done anything to anyone, cross my heart.”
“Jill of Hearts,” Jody muttered under her breath.
An unrepentant Christina stared back at Maggie. “I did it cos you’re bad,” she said simply. “You got my Jody into trouble and got the Big Noses to hurt her.”
“No, I didn’t. I promise.”
“Everyone says so.”
“I don’t,” Charm said. “Cos I know it’s not true. You lot are just foul and nasty and picking on someone cos they’re different. Bullies is what you are, innit. Didn’t you have enough of that outside?”
“Someone grassed us up about the phone,” Alasdair said flatly.
“Weren’t none of my friends,” Lee told him. “I knows that for a fact.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“You need to look closer to home. Did they mash your brain when they did your hand? You don’t get to judge nobody.”
Jody began to chuckle. “It’s all gone Lord of the Flies,” she said. “And no, Barbie, that didn’t have Orlando Bloom in it.”
Marcus looked round the tables. “This stops now,” he told everyone. “The nastiness, the gossip, the whispering, the cruel drawings…”
“Ooh, aren’t you the big moral hero all of a sudden?” Jody remarked. “You gonna bash all of us if we don’t behave how you want us to? Setting yourself up as a dictatorship are you?
Lee strode up to her. “You best back down,” he warned. “You don’t want to be starting no war with me on the other side, because I will win.”
“Ooh, I’m dead scared,” she said, with a waggle of her head.
“You better be. If there’s just one more incident against Maggie, any more abuse or name-calling, no matter who does it, I’ll hold you responsible and come looking. I ain’t talking no fists. I ain’t makin’ no empty threat. I’ll just set fire to your bed with you in it, or cut you a Peckham facelift and give you a grin you won’t never shake. I don’t have no preference. You is trash and you best keep outta my way or you’ll wish you’d croaked in that cupboard. You hearin’ me?”
The insolent smirk slipped off Jody’s face. He meant it. She looked at Alasdair – he was too shocked by Lee’s words to jump to her defence.
“I aksed if you was hearin’ me?” he repeated.
The girl nodded slowly.
Lee pointed to Christina. “Make sure your dumb mini-me there gets the message,” he added. “This hate crap ends today – it is over.”
Alasdair was bursting to say something, but when Lee was in this mood, he was truly intimidating. The Scottish lad sat down and Jody threw him a disgusted look. She couldn’t rely on anyone. Well, that was OK with her. She’d cope with that. She’d bide her time. At least that fat pig was still covered in scribble. That’d take at least a week to get rid of. Until then it’d be a constant reminder of how much people despised her. It was a pity Christina hadn’t written the word Spy on her forehead too.
They ate their thin soup in silence and as quickly as possible. They almost longed for the summons to work, so they could get away. The atmosphere in that dining hall was horrible. You could feel the animosity jabbing across the tables.
Charm was acutely aware of how unhappy Maggie was and r
acked her brains for a way to make her feel better. Normally she would have suggested a makeover, but that was impossible with all the ink on her face. What the girl needed was sisterly support – something stronger than empty-sounding words, which she wasn’t very good at anyway. Solidarity, that’s what was called for, a meaningful demonstration of friendship. Charm suddenly understood what she had to do.
Reaching for the felt pen, she calmly drew a moustache on her own top lip.
“Don’t!” Maggie protested. “It doesn’t come off. You don’t need to do that!”
Charm smiled at her. “Yes, I do,” she said warmly. “Here, will you draw me specs on? I’ll only do ’em wrong. And how about a little pointy goatee as well?”
The others watched in astonishment as Maggie took the pen and did what was asked. Charm sat perfectly still and told her not to forget the spots. Esther and her cronies tried to sneer, but they realised nobody would do the same for them – especially no one as attractive as Charm. They fidgeted uncomfortably and stopped looking.
Lee stared over at her. That girl was full of surprises. The scrawl made her the most beautiful person he’d ever seen. On the next table the girls from Charm’s cabin whispered to one another and grew excited and giggly. When Maggie had finished, one of them asked for the pen and they immediately set about drawing on each other’s faces.
Jody viewed them with disdain. They were mindless sheep. She couldn’t believe how stupid they were and it annoyed her that they had taken the enjoyment out of Maggie being the only one covered in graffiti. Some of the girls from her cabin began to look on enviously. Charm had totally turned the situation around and suddenly it seemed like great fun to doodle on your face. Even Christina was scowling to try and mask her interest.
Jody hated Charm more than ever.
It was a grey, cloudy morning. The fine spring weather had broken and rain looked certain. When they gathered on the lawn, ready to leave for the day’s work, the Punchinellos stared at them suspiciously. They didn’t know what to make of so many drawn-on faces. One was a target for ridicule, but this number looked like some peculiar form of conspiracy. Bezuel went up to Charm and was displeased at what she had done.
“No likey,” the guard said.
“Oh, what a bloody shame,” the girl replied.
He reached up and grabbed her face, then tried to rub the moustache off her lip with a calloused thumb. Charm cried out and Lee jumped forward. Bezuel bared his teeth and pointed a gun at him.
“It’s all right,” Charm told Lee. “I’m OK.”
Bezuel’s beady eyes glowered at the boy and he held the gun at an angle like a gangster rapper. “Pop pop pop,” he cackled. “Me watchy you.”
“I see you too,” Lee replied stonily.
Chewing on a cheroot, Garrugaska strutted up and down the rows of prisoners. He spat at the feet of the drawn-on girls. Then his spurs tinkled to a halt when he came to stand beside Spencer. The boy had drawn a long scar down his cheek. The guard with the silver nose looked him up and down and pulled his revolver, twirling it round a fat finger before holding it out to the boy.
“Pick it up, pilgrim,” he taunted. “Me know you want. Why don’t you try take?”
Spencer was almost tempted. The guard would shoot him dead if he tried. Would that be such a bad thing?
“You’s yeller, compadre. Gun good, make you big man.”
Garrugaska spun the weapon back into his fist and pushed the barrel against the boy’s chest.
“I’ve killed women and children,” he growled, repeating a line from Unforgiven. “I’ve killed everything that walks or crawls at one time or another – and I’m here to kill you.”
Spencer felt the barrel bruising the skin through his shirt. He swallowed fearfully, almost wanting the guard to pull the trigger. That would put an end to this.
The Punchinello removed the cheroot and coughed up a glob of brown phlegm that he spat on to the boy’s shoe.
“This camp ain’t big enough for the two of us,” he said, striding away. “One of these days I’m gonna kill ya, tenderfoot.”
Spencer shivered. When would this nightmare be over?
Jangler emerged from his cabin with the new postcard tucked into his pocket. He was startled to see the scribbled-on faces and wondered what they meant. There was a palpable tension between the children, however, and that pleased him. It was amusing to observe the two factions at one another’s throats. Such heightened emotions and dissent would fuel the Bakelite devices most satisfactorily. The creatures that had transferred last night were the largest yet. They had scarcely fitted in the transit van.
He patted his pocket and made an announcement. Henceforth there would be no more hot water in the bathrooms and cold running water would only be provided for one hour every morning and two hours in the evening. The prisoners groaned with dismay and Jangler congratulated himself. This was only the start. He planned to make other changes they would find even less agreeable. Tomorrow he would turn off the electricity to their cabins and then…
He opened the gates and they filed through, beginning the long march to the minchet thickets. The rain started pattering down and, long before they reached them, the shower had become a drenching downpour that lasted the whole day.
It was still teeming when the children returned in the evening. They were sopping, filthy with mud and shivering. Maggie had thoughtfully put a bucket of boiling water in each bathroom and even Jody was glad to make use of it.
“We’re going to catch our deaths in this place,” she predicted as she towelled Christina’s head.
During the day there had been numerous deliveries coming through the gates. The first was another batch of kitchen waste. Maggie and Esther sorted through it in unfriendly silence. Jangler had refused permission for her to move in with Charm. It suited him to keep the prisoners as wretched as possible. Then a van turned up bearing a large searchlight that was fitted to the sentry platform on the top of the skelter tower. Jangler was determined there would no more night-time panics and confusions in the dark. The other deliveries were solely for the Punchinellos.
Bottles of whisky, rum, tequila, brandy, gin and vodka arrived, together with fifty packets of cigarettes and more cigars. Anchu carried these off to the guards’ cabin straight away and came back reeking of gin, with three lit cigarettes in his wide mouth.
That evening the Punchinellos were carousing in their cabin, glugging down the liquor, with the TV blaring. Yikker was on duty in the tower, swigging from a bottle of vodka. Every now and then the searchlight would be switched on and the powerful beam swept over the camp, making the falling rain glitter.
Alasdair stood by the door of his cabin, listening to the drunken guards’ filthy talk over the screams of a horror film. They were becoming more like the worst sort of humans every day. His hand was aching and he envied them their whisky. His lips and throat felt dry and he was tired and snappy. He missed the comfort and companionship of his guitar, even though he would never be able to play again. Drew and Nicholas kept their distance. Alasdair considered what Lee had said to him that morning. He really had changed. He was filled with anger the whole time and directing it at the wrong targets. This wasn’t the sort of person he wanted to be. Closing his eyes, he played mellow tunes in his mind.
Lee was in Charm’s cabin. She was so proud of the girls there, with their felt-tip faces, that she was rewarding them with a night of pampering and everyone was getting their toenails painted. Never having had any close female friends, with the exception of her mother, she revelled in being a big sister to them and did her best at trying to make this awful place bearable and they loved her for it. She had decided on all of their individual flavours and named them cute, sweet things like dandelion and burdock, blueberry muffin and chocolate marshmallow.
Lee declined when she offered to paint his nails, but he greatly enjoyed her company and they chatted easily about their lives before Dancing Jax.
“This dorm couldn’t be
more different to the one I’m stuck in,” Maggie declared, wiggling her toes and admiring the hot pink she had just applied. “It’s like a morgue in there, but without the sparkling witty banter. I feel like a budgie in a cattery, the way those ratbags stare. That Jangler’s a sod for making me stop in with them.”
“The guy’s a sadist,” Lee said.
“You take no notice of them sour mares,” Charm told her. “You don’t need ’em. They’ll realise what a massive mistake they’ve made, just give it time.”
Maggie agreed, but she regretted the loss of Jody’s friendship and resented the unjust opinion they had of her. For the moment, things were stuck this way. She tried to take her mind off it. Charm had said her flavour was a crumpet with a big dollop of raspberry jam on top. That made Maggie laugh.
“Do you think Marcus likes hot pink?” she asked.
Lee fell about and Charm grinned.
“Aww, you really like him, don’t you?” she said.
Maggie performed a casual shrug. “He’s not as bad as he was. He was a total arse at the beginning, but he’s stopped trying to be the big I am and his brain’s finally climbed out of his pants. The way he sticks up for me is really sweet.”
“Go get him, tiger,” Charm told her.
Spencer was staring out at the rain. He was keeping watch while Marcus pulled the carpet back beneath the stairs.
“It would be so easy,” he muttered to himself. “Be over quick too.”
“What’s that?” Marcus called, replacing the carpet and stamping on it hastily. “Someone coming?”
“Oh, er… sorry, no. I was just talking to myself.”
“Get a grip, dude! How’m I supposed to get anything done if you’re chuntering away to yourself?”
“Do you think getting shot hurts?”
“Course it does, you plank.”
“But if it’s done properly, like lots of bullets in the right places, or just a single one through the head. You wouldn’t feel anything, would you? At least not for long.”