The Iron Woman

by Ted Hughes

  Stealthily opening the front door, she could hear her father and mother in the kitchen. She managed to slip up to her attic unseen. Her light was on and her window still open. And there were the snowdrops.

  First, she put the snowdrops in a little cup, with water. Next, she put the foxglove in a tall, thin, glass jar, with water. Then she sat on her bed.

  What ought she to do? Was this Iron Woman anything like the Iron Man? Lucy had saved a page from a newspaper, with a picture of Hogarth, the boy who was the Iron Man’s friend. It told the name of the farm he lived in and the name of the town nearby. She wrote him a letter. In this letter she described everything about the Iron Woman. Three pages. She began it: ‘You are the Iron Man expert and I need your help.’ And she ended it: ‘Please come quickly or the Iron Woman will smash up the factory where my dad works and kill all the people.’

  She sellotaped one of the snowdrops to the letter, just beside her signature, and drew a ring round it, with an arrow pointing to the word proof. Then she added: ‘PS You can camp in our orchard. People do. Say you want to birdwatch in the marsh like lots of people.’

  After posting this letter, she started searching for the Iron Woman. Maybe if she knows my father works at the Waste Factory, she thought, she will think again. Or maybe she’ll smash it up only after he’s come home. After all, I’m her friend. She came to me to be washed. I showed her the river. She showed me the creatures crying. But though Lucy searched for most of that day, she found no trace of the Iron Woman.

  She went back again to the river, to look again at those footprints. Their size and depth frightened her more than ever. She thought they might lead somewhere, but they didn’t. The Iron Woman must have gone up or down the river, wading in the water, when she left Lucy. Upriver, she would come to the Waste Factory. But she might have gone downriver, back into the marsh or the sea.

  That evening, Lucy was relieved when her father got home. Ought she to tell him everything? Then maybe he could warn the factory somehow. By the time she went to bed she had a splitting headache. But still she hadn’t mentioned the Iron Woman. She knew she should, but somehow she couldn’t. Her mother and father would never believe her. She just knew they wouldn’t. They would ask her endless questions. They would think something was wrong with her. They might even want to take her to the doctor.

  She hardly slept. She knew she was waiting. She lay there, listening, hearing every slightest sound. She had left her window slightly open, so she would hear better. She kept remembering the creatures and their cry, and that dreadful dance. Gradually, as she thought about it all, she became more and more frightened. Perhaps the Iron Woman really was insane. What did she mean, ‘Destroy’? The night hours passed slowly.

  The lark began to sing, climbing up through the darkness. As soon as it’s light, thought Lucy, I’ll start searching again. And with that thought she fell asleep and began to dream.

  Just as before, somebody was coming up the attic stair, but this time in a hurry. The door banged open. Once again that strange girl with the oil-slick slime all over her face and hair and arms, was bending over her, with her great black eyes, shaking her shoulder and shouting: ‘Quickly. Quickly. Now. Come with me.’

  And in her dream, Lucy jumped out of bed.

  Immediately the two of them were standing on the marsh road. It was dawn. The red sun hung there, over the marsh, much bigger than the real sun. For some reason, the road was covered with eels, and Lucy thought: Something has frightened them out of the marsh. When she bent to look at one, it stared up at her with human eyes, large, black and shining, like the girl’s. She noticed that her own feet were bare, but at that moment the girl grabbed her arm. Lucy looked up. The girl was pointing.

  The Iron Woman was rising out of the marsh, beneath the red sun. She reared to her full height, blocking the sun with her black shape. She climbed out on to the road, streaming with slime, and strode away towards the town.

  Now Lucy knew what was going to happen. But the Iron Woman was already there and Lucy was too late. She looked around for the girl, but suddenly a mob of screaming women were running past her. The Waste Factory was exploding like a vast bonfire made of firebombs. Huge tangles of pipes soared into the air, roofs rose like wings, buckled and collapsed, in a glare of shooting red flames and blizzards of sparks. The Iron Woman stood in the middle of it, simply tearing the factory buildings out of the ground. She hurled the fragments in all directions, like a madwoman in a strawberry patch ripping up the plants. Lucy stood alone, in her nightdress, her feet bare, knocked and shoved by the stampeding crowd of terrified women.

  And now she could see that the Iron Woman herself was on fire. But that didn’t stop her one bit. In fact she seemed to enjoy it. She had begun to dance her frightening dance, snatching up girder towers and tossing them aside, kicking gantries into the air, her great black body outlined in her own flames. She was like a giant Guy Fawkes, kicking and trampling and scattering his own bonfire while he blazed.

  Now Lucy saw a massive chunk of steel catwalk hurtling towards her through the air. She seemed to have plenty of time to examine it, as it grew larger and larger. Tiny figures of men were clinging to it. She tried to see if one of them was her father. And yes – there he was. She could see him clearly, embracing a girder, his head twisted and staring down at her in amazement as he fell towards her.

  She woke with a cry and scrambled out of bed as if that jagged mass of steel rails and girders with its cargo of clinging men might crash on to her pillow. She stood by the window, shaking. She had never had such a nightmare. She hardly dared close her eyes in case the whole thing might still be going on inside there, behind her eyelids.

  The morning was perfectly still. She could hear the lark, faint and far up. The window square was dark blue. On the windowsill, just inside the curtain, side by side, the two snowdrops dangled their heads over the edge of the little cup, still fast asleep.

  *

  Ever since the Iron Man had made Hogarth so famous, all kinds of people sent him letters. But this was the strangest yet. He sat on his bed re-reading it, and looking at the snowdrop.

  He’d often wondered if the Iron Man had any relatives, somewhere. They’d be hidden away, of course. Quite likely in some deep mudhole. Or in the sea. Or inside the earth. After all, the Iron Man had come from somewhere. Why shouldn’t there be others?

  What puzzled Hogarth was all this about the crying of the creatures, the uproar of screeches coming through the Iron Woman’s hand when she touched you. It sounded like electrical voltage. It sounded dangerous. And the Iron Woman herself sounded dangerous. That dance. And that mad song ‘Destroy’.

  Yes, he had to go. After all, he was the expert Iron Giant handler. Besides, what would the Iron Man make of it? Sometimes, Hogarth thought, the Iron Man seemed a bit lonely. But first, he’d better go and see.

  In the holidays it was easy to get away from home for a few days. Those marshes were famous for birds, and Hogarth had been given a pair of binoculars for Christmas. His father wanted some help repairing fences, but then said there wasn’t much that needed doing, he could do it himself. His mother drove Hogarth to the station with his packed sandwiches and his tent. By five that afternoon he had pitched the tent in the small orchard behind Lucy’s house. Lucy herself showed him just where. Her mother gave him a cup of tea and Lucy offered to show him the ways into the marsh, where the meres of open water were.

  Instead, she took him to the river and showed him the footprints. He saw at once they were the real thing. The toes were new. The Iron Man did not have separate toes. Hogarth kept asking: ‘How high is she to the knee? How thick is her arm? Compared to your body. How big is her hand?’

  It seemed the Iron Woman was just about the same size as the Iron Man. But where was she? The Iron Man liked to stand among trees. Behind the town, where the land rose into rolling low hills, Hogarth could see some woods. Lucy had not yet searched in those woods. They set off.

  On the way, t
hey passed the wreckage of the car, in the marsh, and stopped to look at it. Already it was beginning to rust. Hogarth wanted to get out to it, to inspect it. He stepped from clump to clump of reeds.

  ‘Be careful,’ cried Lucy. ‘It can be deep if you go in.’

  ‘See the holes.’ Hogarth pointed from where he was. Lucy saw a row of three jagged holes across the twisted bonnet and wing.

  ‘Her finger holes,’ said Hogarth. ‘Where she grabbed it.’

  Coming back, he made a long stride to a reed clump that collapsed under his foot. With a floundering splash he managed to keep his balance, but he was in over his knees and sinking fast. He lurched another stride or two and was stuck, sinking again. Lucy jumped down the bank and just managed to catch his reaching hand.

  But as she began to heave him towards safety they both froze and stared at each other.

  ‘Can you hear it?’ she cried. ‘That’s it.’

  Hogarth’s mouth opened. He was sinking slowly, but he could not believe his ears. He looked as though he had seen an amazing thing in the sky behind Lucy’s head. And she shouted again, above the deafening roar in her own ears:

  ‘That’s it. That’s their noise. That’s the creatures.’

  Hogarth made another wild lunge, scrambled up the grassy bank and let go of her. The moment their hands parted the sounds stopped.

  Hogarth was panting, as if he’d run across a field. He looked around wildly, every way.

  ‘Was that it? I heard them all. I could hear them all. I seemed to see things.’

  ‘Isn’t it horrible?’ cried Lucy. ‘Are your ears ringing?’

  Hogarth nodded. His eyes were wide open, as if they had no lids. Looking at him, Lucy felt even more frightened. Perhaps it was all far more dreadful than she had thought. Far, far more dreadful.

  Suddenly he glared at her fiercely and grabbed her hand. Lucy squeezed her eyes shut as the sound came again – exactly as if it had been switched on like a glaring light full in her eyes. Or like an amplifier full blast into her earphones. It actually seemed to hurt her, like a whacking blow all over her body at the same moment.

  He let go of her hand and the sound stopped.

  ‘It’s when we touch, don’t you see?’ he cried. ‘It’s when we touch.’

  Lucy felt bewildered. She was too frightened to think. Hogarth’s excitement was frightening. As if the sounds, the screams of all the creatures, weren’t bad enough. Hogarth somehow made it worse.

  And then again, without warning her, he clasped her wrist again, with his right hand. And again they stared at each other as the shattering din, the howls, the screeches, the wailings, the groans and screams engulfed them. Then they jumped apart, ears ringing.

  ‘Is it in me? Or is it in both of us?’ Lucy almost shouted. ‘What’s happening? We have to find her.’

  They set off again. Maybe the Iron Woman could explain what it all meant. Hogarth did not know what to do with his excitement.

  ‘It’s contagious!’ he cried. ‘You’ve caught it off the Iron Woman. Now I’ve caught it off you. And if I grab somebody, they’ll hear it too. And then if they grab somebody they’ll hear it too. And on and on. Just think!’

  Lucy didn’t dare to think. What was it going to be like when her father touched her, and her mother?

  They hurried on towards the woods.

  *

  They searched all along the bottom fringe of the woods, but there was no sign of her having gone in, no great footprints.

  ‘Maybe she’s just not here any more,’ said Lucy. ‘Maybe she just came and now she’s just gone. Maybe she wasn’t real somehow.’

  They looked out across the town towards the marsh and the strip of sea, dark in the evening. Hogarth could feel the disappointment creeping up on him.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘She was real.’

  ‘But if she’s gone,’ said Lucy, ‘she might just as well not have been.’

  Hogarth caught her hand.

  Anybody looking at them would have seen nothing but a boy and a girl holding hands under the woodside. But to them it was as if they were trapped in a tunnel flattened against the wall, while an express train went past within inches of their faces.

  And now Hogarth saw things quite clearly, as Lucy did. In every cry of the terrific roaring blast it seemed to him that he could see a wild face, a mouth stretched wide, a body hunched up. Even though he was simply gazing at the far edge of the sea, it was as if he were looking through the earth, and seeing it crammed full of every possible kind of creature – all screaming, wailing with all their might, where the tiniest shrimp sounded like a mad elephant and sticklebacks sounded like trapped tigers and slim black leeches like bellowing alligators.

  Finally, Lucy snatched her hands away and pressed her palms over her ears.

  ‘Let’s see this Waste Factory,’ shouted Hogarth. ‘Let’s have a look at it.’

  *

  In the dusk the factory resembled a small, separate city, glowing with a thousand lights. Smoke from thirty chimneys climbed straight up in the still air then flattened out, as if under a ceiling, making a floating carpet over the town beyond. The whole factory throbbed like a vast car engine running under its lifted bonnet. And yet, Lucy knew, inside it was teeming with people.

  It had been built outside the town and right beside the river. At first, it had merely crushed old vehicles, for scrap. Then it had begun to recycle waste, of certain kinds. Then it grew bigger, and began to recycle waste of all kinds. Now it collected waste from other countries. It grew bigger, with incinerators burning night and day. It grew bigger, with acres of oildrums, painted all colours and piled in teetering stacks, full of nameless waste from different industries, and different countries. A fleet of articulated trucks came and went constantly, bringing in the waste, or taking waste out to be dumped in other places.

  Nearly everybody in the town, and in the villages around, worked there. They called it ‘Chicago’.

  Lucy and Hogarth stood on the opposite bank. Even in the dimming light they could see the pipes pouring foam out of the factory’s side. Lucy counted fifteen pipes. A strange smell came off the river too. Like the bitter taste of a knife blade. But she knew that the smell often changed.

  Suddenly, over the drumming of the factory came a new sound. They looked downriver.

  What Hogarth thought was a clump of trees seemed to be moving. The sound came again, a roaring wail – like a siren.

  ‘It’s her,’ hissed Lucy.

  They watched as the Iron Woman came wading up the river. Horrified, they saw her reach out and grasp the top of a tall cylinder, which looked like a gasometer enmeshed in pipes and ladders. The screech of tearing metal told them what was happening.

  ‘If she breaks the pipes,’ cried Hogarth, ‘everything will pour into the river.’

  ‘Iron Woman!’ Lucy almost screamed. ‘Iron Woman!’

  And at once the Iron Woman became still. Then she loomed larger. She stood above them.

  ‘We’ve been looking for you,’ cried Lucy. ‘This is Hogarth. He knows the Iron Man.’

  The gigantic figure kneeled on the river bank. Her huge face came down, her eyes came close. Hogarth found himself looking into her strange black eyes.

  How different! he was thinking. She’s really not much like the Iron Man at all. She seems to be differently made.

  But what he said aloud was: ‘I’ve come from the Iron Man. He has a plan. He knows what to do.’

  Those eyes, it seemed to Hogarth, smiled somehow. And a rumbling became a voice. ‘Some plans,’ it said, ‘are bad.’ It sounded just like thunder, coming from everywhere at once and crumbling away into the far distance.

  ‘No, no!’ cried Lucy. ‘It’s a way to stop the rubbishers.’

  The great black eyes seemed to grip both of them, and the voice came again. ‘They have to be changed,’ it said. ‘Not just stopped.’

  ‘That’s the Iron Man’s plan,’ cried Hogarth. ‘To change them.’

  Lucy
had no idea what Hogarth was talking about. She only knew she had to stop the Iron Woman ripping down Chicago. And Hogarth had no idea either. He had simply said the first thing that came into his head. But now he’d started he knew he had to go on, even though it was a complete lie.

  ‘The Iron Man is on his way,’ he said. ‘To help you. He’ll be here tomorrow.’ He spoke very loud, as if to a deaf person. He was already thinking what he had to do.

  The Iron Woman stood erect. Her arm rose and pointed. Her voice rumbled through them: ‘Tomorrow I shall be in that wood. If Iron Man does not come, I shall finish what I started. I shall tear this factory out of the ground tomorrow night. Then he can come and eat it.’

  The Iron Woman climbed out of the river past them, and disappeared into the dark woods.

  ‘Home,’ said Lucy. ‘My parents will be worried.’

  But as they half walked, half trotted towards Lucy’s home, it was Hogarth who was worried. He had to find a telephone.

  At last they came to a kiosk. He reversed the charges and gave the number that only he knew. He listened to it ringing. How strange to know that it was ringing actually inside the Iron Man’s head.

  Then came a click, then silence, then: ‘Y-e-e-e-e-e-e-s.’ That funny, familiar voice.

  Hogarth told him everything. And he kept repeating: ‘You have to come quick – by tomorrow.’

  But the Iron Man said nothing more. Hogarth held the receiver, listening into the great silence – the silence inside the Iron Man’s head. ‘You do hear me, don’t you?’ he cried.

  But suddenly – a click and brrrrr! The Iron Man had switched off.

  Hogarth stood for a while. He knew the Iron Man didn’t waste words. But would he come or wouldn’t he? Had he understood or hadn’t he?

  *

  Next morning, Hogarth took his binoculars to the marsh. But he waited near Otterfeast Bridge, where Lucy was going to meet him. He sat on the bank, over the drain, spying here and there through his binoculars. After a while, he noticed something floating towards him on the slow current of the drain. It turned out to be a carp – a huge carp as big as a collie dog. He raked it in with a stick and sat looking at it. He had heard that carp were very hard to kill. You could keep them alive for days in a wet sack. But something had killed this. He was counting the big scales when Lucy arrived on the bridge.