The Testament of Jessie Lamb

by Jane Rogers

  At Shrewsbury we got onto a smaller, slower, emptier train, where we kept our bikes with us in the compartment. Lisa had a map and showed me where we were going – the farm was eight miles from the nearest station. Through the windows the countryside was empty and rolling, with fields of sheep and the odd huddled farm. In the distance it rose to higher hills. The day had started off misty grey but now the clouds were breaking up. We watched a patch of blue appear.

  The place we had to get off was just a platform with a name board, there wasn’t even a ticket office. We wheeled our bikes off and we were the only people there. Away to the right was a dark terraced row of houses, with empty gardens running down to the tracks. ‘It’s over the level crossing and left.’ Lisa swung up onto her bike, and I followed her up the hill at a pace that was slower than walking and twice as much effort. But I managed to stay on till I got to the crest, and then magically, once I was whizzing down, the gears clicked and became usable again.

  The air was bright and fresh in my lungs, after the stuffy train, and the pumping of my legs sent oxygen fizzing round my body. Sunshine was rolling across the countryside, between clouds, like a spotlight singling out a stone wall here, a green splash of field there, a silvery copse. The next hill was steeper and Lisa hunched over her handlebars and pedalled furiously to get to the top. When I’d reached halfway I got off and pushed. There was no sound but my own panting and the slight rubbing of my back brake block, and the distant cawing of rooks. The landscape around me felt huge and empty, with just me at the centre of it. Lisa waited for me at the top and we went spinning down together, shrieking at the speed and breathlessness of it. The fields unrolled before us like a carpet.

  Eventually there was a smaller lane turning off to the right, and then Lisa stopped by a gate. ‘It’s up there.’ A track wound away uphill and into bare trees. The gate wasn’t locked but the hinges were knackered. We managed to squeeze the bikes through, and pushed them up into the woods. From the top we could see down to a stream in the valley bottom, and a farmhouse with a cluster of outbuildings. The sun came out again, a wash of light flooding the valley. We looked at each other and laughed. Then we parked our bikes against trees and set off down to the house.

  There was a stone flagged yard in front, with buildings to three sides – the house, a dilapidated barn, and some wooden sheds that looked like animal pens. A couple of mouldy straw bales lay in front of the barn. Lisa lifted a stone from the farmhouse doorstep and uncovered a big old-fashioned key. She unlocked the door and we went in to the dim kitchen. ‘God,’ she said, ‘it’s perfect!’ There was an old cooking range along one wall, and a big black dresser, cluttered with cups and plates and yellowing papers – bills, junk mail, newspapers. The table was piled with jars and bottles, seed catalogues, a computer and printer, a washing basket full of clothes. There was a pair of cracked boots by the range, and waterproofs dangling from a hook on the door. The place smelt of damp and decay, with a sweetish sickly tinge which I realised was probably a dead mouse or bird.

  ‘What happened to the people?’ I asked. There was a rusty frying pan in the washing up bowl, in a sludge of stagnant water.

  ‘It’s a sad story,’ said Lisa. ‘But look! A solid fuel stove, how good is that? We can have heat and cooking and hot water, just by chopping up some wood.’ She tried the tap, it spattered briefly then the pipes clanged and it stopped. ‘They’ve turned it off,’ she said. ‘We’ll get plastic barrels and catch the rainfall off the roof.’

  We went through into the sitting room, where a flowery sofa was pushed up close to the fireplace. Soft white ashes lay in the grate. There was a telly in the corner, and a calculator and pen and handwritten lists of figures lying by the sofa. Through the lounge was a junk room piled high with boxes and broken furniture. ‘What happened, Lisa?’

  She told me as we went upstairs and explored the bedrooms. The farm belonged to a young couple who were going to do it up. The woman was pregnant, then came MDS. The husband stayed there on his own until October and then he killed himself. The farm reverted to his parents. Now they were the ones donating it to motherless kids.

  ‘Did they both die here, in this house?’

  ‘How should I know? Is that all you’re interested in? Can’t you see the fantastic potential this place has?’

  ‘Sorry. Yes.’ In the main bedroom the bedclothes lay in a tangled pushed-back heap, as if someone had got out of them that very morning. In the other room a stepladder leant against the wall, and there was a tin of paint with a brush balanced on it. One powder blue wall. There was an attic above the bedrooms. You could see the sky through the roof in a couple of places, and there were leaves and feathers on the floor. ‘I bet there’s a nest up there,’ I said, but we couldn’t see it.

  Outside we checked out the other buildings, which were all pretty decrepit, and she launched into her plans. There was donated money in the Kids’ House bank account. She was going to buy tools and seed. She’d plant vegetables; potatoes, onions, beans, cabbage, beetroot, sweet corn, sunflowers. They would have to put proper fencing round the garden to keep out deer and rabbits. She was going to buy a polytunnel and grow tomatoes and strawberries and lettuce in there, and also get chickens and goats. She had read about keeping livestock and reckoned she would be able to milk a goat and make yoghurt and cheese. She was going to buy apple and plum and hazelnut trees and raspberry and blackcurrant canes, and get someone who knew about bees to come and set up a hive and teach her how to look after it. Household waste would be composted with urine and used to fertilise the gardens. They would mend the gates and repair the roof and make the house weatherproof. And if they could get all that done this year, then next year they would plant bigger crops, some grain, maybe an orchard, and start to keep cows.

  ‘We can convert the barn into more sleeping places,’ she said, ‘and we can use the sheds for storage. We can sun-dry things like tomatoes, we can make jam and preserve fruit, and make an underground storage place for root vegetables so they don’t get frosted in winter. The stream can supplement our rain water, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t fix up our own wind turbine on top of that hill.’ She laughed. ‘I’m going to call it Eden!’

  I sat on an old bench in the back garden while she went into the house again to make an inventory of tools that were already there. The spring sun was almost warm, and there was bright yellow coltsfoot growing between the paving stones of the path. I imagined Lisa coming here with a bunch of the others, unloading supplies and deciding who’d sleep where, clearing up the kitchen, dragging rubbish out to make a bonfire. They’d stand around the flames as it got dark, laughing and making plans.

  The coltsfoot was the first flower of spring. Everything was renewing itself, soon the valley would be full of new green leaves. Lisa came out and called that she was ready. When I went into the yard she was wrestling with the key which wouldn’t turn in the lock. She laughed and said it didn’t want her to leave. I did it for her and put the key under the stone, and we walked back up to our bikes. Lisa rattled on about how the place could be improved. I wasn’t thinking but there was something hissing in my head like static. It went on all the time we were cycling to the station. As we wheeled our bikes onto the platform my head cleared, and I realised I didn’t want to go home.

  If I could just be on my own for a bit – really on my own, not where other people could get at me – and have some time to think, then I’d be able to get it straight. Eden was the perfect place to stay. This wasn’t to do with anyone else any more; not Baz or Iain or Mum or Dad or Lisa or Sal; only me. My life. I needed to let myself expand to fill a space – a room, the house, the valley – to be really, one hundred per cent certain.

  I thought for a moment Lisa might decide to stay too, but she wanted to get back to Gabe. I asked her to phone Mum and Dad for me when she got back to somewhere with a signal. When the train came I stood on the platform with my bike and waved her off. I told myself this was the right thing to do if I
could cycle all the way back without getting off once, and I managed it, even though I had to stand on the pedals near the top of the second hill, and wobbled all over the road because I was going so slow. I hid my bike in bushes near the gate and everything sounded louder as I walked up the track – the cawing crows and little chirruping woodland birds, the rustle of my footsteps, the soft wind in the tree tops. Bright green garlicky-smelling leaves were poking through the dead leaves. A startled bird went off in a bomb of song. If the key turns without sticking, I told myself, if I can get the stove to light, then it proves I should be here. The key turned easily at the first try. I explored the house again, seeing different things now I was on my own; the basket of twigs and logs beside the living room fire; the airing cupboard in the bathroom, with neatly folded sheets and pillowcases inside. There was a sack of wizened sprouting potatoes in the pantry, and some tins – tomatoes, tuna, sweetcorn. I could make myself a meal.

  I decided to light the fire in the sitting room, and to sleep on the sofa there where it was cosy. I brought down clean sheets and a duvet. They were damp but I could warm them by the fire. I spent some time looking through the kitchen drawers for candles. I couldn’t find any except half a packet of birthday-cake candles. It didn’t matter. I could keep the fire going until I was ready to sleep.

  I cleared the ashes out of the grate then went on a hunt for water to wash my hands. I remembered the airing cupboard with its big round hot water tank. Lisa had tried the cold tap but not the hot, and when I turned the hot tap in the bathroom, the pipe gurgled and water came. A tankful would be more than enough to last me.

  The afternoon was gone and I scrumpled up the papers lying on the floor, and laid and lit the fire with the last of the matches in a box on the mantelpiece. I made it up with a couple of logs then put the guard in front. I drew the thick curtains and went out into the yard. The sun had already set and the sky was a clear dark blue. I could see the first, brightest stars. The rooks were cawing in the woods but apart from that it was quiet – open and peaceful to the sky. I peed in the garden and hoped I wouldn’t need to come out again that night.

  When I went indoors I couldn’t see in the kitchen and had to feel my way past the table and chairs. My fire was blazing, filling the sitting room with the lovely smell of woodsmoke, making long black shadows behind the sofa and armchairs. I’d already gathered everything I needed – tins and tin opener, saucepan, spoon, mug of water. I held the saucepan over the flames for as long as I could, and ate my tea lukewarm, with my face glowing from the fire. Then I sat staring into the flames, letting my mind empty of everything but those red and yellow dancing shapes. As they died down I wrapped myself in the duvet and snuggled down to sleep, with the warmth of the firelight flickering across my eyelids.

  I don’t know how long I slept but I woke up with a jerk. When I opened my eyes it was black. I lay still remembering where I was. I turned towards where the fire should be but it had gone. I sat up and put my feet on the gritty carpet. The blackness was like a smothering cloak. There weren’t even darker outlines of things, it was all just pitch black. The best thing to do would be to open the curtain.

  I made myself creep-shuffle towards the window. My fingers found the heavy velvet of the curtain and pulled, then I put my hand out and touched the cold pane. But it wasn’t any lighter. I pulled both the curtains back with a great tearing noise, but my eyes couldn’t make any sense of it, there was nothing there but blackness. Was there a wall out there, facing the window, blocking the sky? I was shivering now, I felt my way back to the sofa and pulled the duvet around me. It was like the world had filled up with soot. I imagined being buried alive. No matter how wide you think you’re opening your eyes, still dark. Darkness pressing against your face and no way out of it. What if you knew that, even though they thought they’d put you to sleep?

  I tried to be sensible. There was no light outside because there weren’t any streetlamps or other houses. Good, no light pollution. But my heart was thumping so hard it was making my chest ache. I thought of the young couple who had died here. Being dead is the darkness pressing itself into your eyes and ears and mouth, shutting you into your aloneness. If only there was just the faintest glimmer to show the shape of the window. But everything had vanished. I remembered my mobile which lights up when you press it. I’d switched it off to save the battery because there was no signal. I felt around the floor but it wasn’t anywhere near. I was afraid to move, I needed to keep quiet and listen. As each minute passed it was more impossible for me to bear the next. If I can get through this, I told myself … if only I can get through this night …

  When morning came at last my eyes ached from straining for it. They were playing tricks, seeing black shapes in blackness, moving layers of black. Eventually I could make out greyness at the window. Once I was sure the light was there I curled up and dozed.

  I went outside an hour or two later, and it was a low misty morning with new puddles. Soft rain must have fallen in the night. The whole valley was muffled in cloud, I couldn’t even hear any birds. I felt bleached and thin with sleeplessness. I knew I had been pathetic. But it would be better to back out now than fail at the last minute, and run away. Dr Nichol wanted me to be certain and I was too scared even to close my eyes. I was too scared of the dark.

  Thursday night

  When he’s emptied the bucket he says, ‘You’re smelly, Jess. You need a bath.’

  ‘I can’t smell me.’

  ‘You’d be more comfortable if you had a bath. I don’t understand you.’

  ‘Clearly.’

  ‘Oh for god’s sake. D’you want to make yourself ill?’

  ‘Why not? I think I’ll go on hunger strike.’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘You doubt it. You still think I’m a greedy little kid. You still think you know, don’t you? You still think you know everything about me.’

  ‘I know you better than anyone alive. That’s why I know you’re making a mistake. And that you’ll come out the other side of this and thank me.’

  ‘You don’t know. There are millions of things about me you don’t know!’

  ‘I’m going to run you a bath.’

  ‘I’m not getting into it.’

  He goes out and I hear the clank of the plug, the faint squeak of the tap, the water gushing out in spurts through the old unused pipes. I hear him swirling it about, adding cold, turning off the hot. Eventually both taps go silent and he comes back in. ‘It’s ready.’

  I don’t move. The tap drips.

  ‘I’ll undo your locks in the bathroom then shut you in and leave you in privacy to undress and sort yourself out. I’ll bring your clean clothes up.’

  How kind of him. I don’t move.

  ‘Come on Jess.’

  ‘I’m sorry but I can’t help you.’

  ‘Look, just come and look at the bath – you’ll see how much you want to get in.’

  I don’t move.

  ‘Have I got to carry you?’

  I shrug.

  ‘For god’s sake Jess, what game are you playing now?’

  ‘Passive resistance.’ You taught me about that, remember? Remember telling me about Mahatma Ghandi?

  ‘Stop being silly.’

  I guess he doesn’t remember.

  ‘I’m going downstairs. Your bath’s getting cold. Call me when you change your mind.’

  When you change your mind. He thinks he can make whatever he wants happen – not if, but when. ‘I’m not your puppet!’ I yell.

  His footsteps on the stairs pause, then continue down.

  I don’t owe him anything. This is enough now. He has plotted and planned against me, bullied me, hurt me. He has kept me here since Saturday! And he still thinks he knows best, he’s completely undented. I shouldn’t hold anything in reserve. I should do whatever it takes to get my way – lying, fighting, damaging – whatever means I can find.

  He hasn’t hesitated to use force. And what about that box? This i
s on day one, when he’s got me tied up on the floor. He goes out to the car and brings in a cardboard box. With tools. There’s a hammer and drill and screwdriver, and he goes upstairs and I hear him drilling into the doorframe, fitting the thing that he slips the lock through when he locks me in. He planned that. At our house, in our garage, he went through the tool box and put stuff in the cardboard box, with new bikelocks and rope and the scarf for a gag, thinking ‘I’m going to use these on Jessie.’ How dare he?

  I’ll show him. I’ll show him whether he can control me. I am so angry I start shaking with hunger. ‘I want FOOD!’ I shout.

  He runs up the stairs.

  ‘Food! Food!’

  ‘I’ll make you something when you’ve had your bath.’

  ‘FOOD!’

  He goes downstairs and shuts the door.

  I have to fight back tears. I’m not going to cry again here. He’s wrong and I’m right, and now it’s time to do anything I have to do, to prove it.

  But I’m so hungry I can’t think. When did he last feed me? Lunchtime, scrambled eggs and veggie sausages. I shouldn’t be this hungry. I try telling my stomach that but it’s not interested. I see my little pimple of a brain sitting on top of a big greedy body trying to order it about. When they put your brain to sleep that’s all you’ll be: a big greedy body.

  No. No. Calm down. Inhale. Exhale. Calm. I think of the swishing machines.

  My body is clever. With rhythms and secrets and powers that are nothing to do with my mind. My body will take over, growing the perfect life inside me. And my silly jabbering mind will be still.

  I make myself focus on the fragment of grey sky I can see through the window. It’s not completely dark. It’s going to be alright. I am in control. I can feel myself getting stronger. I haven’t gone through all this, just for him to foil me now.

  I’m going to beat you, Dad.