That meant no history unless it was about the Empire before it imploded, and with a heavy emphasis on World War II because, as the Mayor was keen on quoting, it had been Britain’s finest hour.
The running order of monarchs was acceptable up to and including the reign of Queen Elizabeth II – though the Battle of Hastings was a sore point – and there was absolutely nothing to be said about philosophy, creative writing, languages, alternative models of economics, or sciences beyond the proper application of agricultural chemicals. Nothing containing the C words of climate change. Preferably nothing written pre-twentieth century, when the rot set in with gender politics and uppity foreigners. No mention of any authors outside of the British Isles, as that would imply foreigners were on the same footing and of equal worth and intelligence.
Teaching a wide range of ages was challenging; she used to get around that by allowing the older and more able students to mentor the others, helping them to overcome their frustrations at the slow pace of learning, and encouraging them to study the school’s meagre library during the hours they weren’t out working for their families, the farms or the village.
But that had all changed. Though he had been a sweet little boy when he first arrived, since turning eight Spight’s grandson seemed to live to disrupt – she suspected it was the only reason he bothered to turn up. That or the possibility that, like everyone else, he was afraid of his grandfather.
Of course, she’d have more students if they didn’t keep getting sold off to the fat farm by their parents or called up to join the militia to fight the civil war rumbling along the county borders. Or else just disappearing, which happened from time to time. At least those who vanished might have made it out of Devon and be enjoying a happier life elsewhere. She sighed, watched the children’s heads bent over their ancient textbooks, and looked at the clock. Ten past nine. It would be a long morning.
absolute blackness settled all around
He didn’t know how long he had been sleeping, as the light in the room was unchanged when he awoke. Will fumbled his father’s wristwatch off the crate standing on its end by the cot to make a bedside table, which told him it was two o’clock in the afternoon and he’d been asleep for five hours. The Major wouldn’t expect him to be up for another hour, but he felt rested, if stiff from having spent last night’s watch cramped in one position for so long.
The room was empty, but he could hear a faint murmur of voices coming from the radio room next door. He didn’t have clearance to go in there without an invitation or an emergency, so he allowed himself another five minutes of rest while he speculated what the Major might have for him to do that night. The pattern of his shifts hadn’t changed for two weeks straight – lurk, observe, take notes of not very much. So far as he could see, nothing had happened in that time that would mean the mission was closer to being completed.
Hopefully, whatever it was would get him out of the bunker, and not just for observation duty. It was hard going being in such confined and windowless quarters for longer than it took to eat, sleep and, occasionally, wash. The small complex buried in the gardens of Bodingleigh House had been built during World War II as a failsafe in case of a successful invasion and had not been designed for comfort. The radio operators stationed in the grand, mock-Gothic manor house would have decamped to the bunker to carry out covert acts of communication and sabotage, in concert with others stationed at strategic points around the country, and thus achieved victory.
Perhaps because it had never been called into use, it had fallen out of public awareness in the village. It was Will who had rediscovered it, having crashed through an open escape hatch while trespassing to climb trees, in the weeks before his parents took him away. Until he passed on news of its existence, SCREW had a much riskier plan to use an abandoned barn on the estate. The bunker was perfect for their needs; despite a century of neglect, it remained largely intact.
Will first learned about World War II from old Mrs P’s lessons. From what he had read in the tattered books in her classroom, shared with unruly neighbours and their sharp elbows, he could be excused for thinking that history had ended then. For one thing, fashions in Devon had barely changed. The men and women in the old black-and-white photos looked indistinguishable from the adults he saw every day, men dressed in homespun woollens and women in home-sewn dresses and imported nylon housecoats.
It wasn’t until he arrived in Saltash that he realised anyone could wear another colour besides black, navy or brown, and not until he entered basic training as soon as he turned sixteen that he discovered what winning the war had meant in terms of losing the battle with the climate before anyone outside of a scientific and industrial elite even knew there was a battle to be fought. In classes in old Nissen huts, together with the rest of SCREW’s newest volunteers, he had learned another story: of how a frugal generation, brought up under rationing and brutalised by horrors that had to be borne with a stiff upper lip, had been rejected by their children. How a habit of empire had persisted as the old order was remade and maps redrawn, and globalised markets had metastasised the canker of extreme neo-liberalism across the world and turned a diverse planetary ecology into one malignant shopping centre dominated by multinationals.
He had to admit – to himself, he wouldn’t dare say it to anyone else – to being jealous that he hadn’t been alive in a time when you could order anything you wanted, so long as you had cash or access to credit, and have it delivered to you the next day. The way it was described, it sounded like magic. It seemed so unfair, for his generation, that they were lucky to get a new, scratchy home-knitted sweater or socks for Christmas or birthdays and had to work so hard. Life was much better in Cornwall – and, he was told, the rest of the country – than it had been in Devon. It was still harder for generations born since the turn of the millennium than it had been for the previous two.
It was harder to admit, even to himself, that he was still a bit seduced by the glamour of the wartime story absorbed in childhood. The simple narrative of good versus evil, played out in the black-and-white films watched on the school projector, using a generator reserved for special occasions only, held the warm glow of nostalgia and the comfort of certainty. But then he would remember where the fuel for the generator came from, and how the Nazi regime used the fat of slaughtered concentration-camp victims, and feel a bit sick that harvesting still happened, even if the victims were now living.
The bunker was far enough underground to be soundproof. Escape tunnels and hatches in case of discovery, ventilation ducts and tubes containing wiring, riddled the surrounding hillside in a complicated circulatory system. It also had a very basic toilet and shower supplied by a tank fed with rainwater. All of this was news to Will, who had been primarily interested in the fact he had a secret place to go to be sure of being alone and had told none of his friends or family about his discovery. His sisters were a pain, and his parents too caught up in their dispute with the Council; home had been a place of fraught conversations held in low voices behind closed doors. And then weeks later he was gone, and memories of the bunker had faded in the excitement of new impressions and experiences. It wasn’t until after finishing training and volunteering to be posted back to Bodingleigh that he remembered the bunker and realised how useful it could be to SCREW.
It also had its original radio room. Devoid of equipment, it did retain a full set of switch panels, reconnected once the Major had broken into an abandoned military museum in Dartmouth and appropriated the kit they would need to keep in touch with other cells of activists while they coordinated strategy. The upper echelons of the resistance had satellite phones, but they were expensive and could be more easily monitored and tracked. Radio was safer.
With nothing to do but wait, Will made himself useful by putting a pan of water on the cooker to boil. By the time the door to the radio room opened the tea was brewed, using up another precious tea bag. The liquid he poured out was barely brown, but tea-making was more of a symbolic a
ct in the bunker.
The Major came out carrying a folder, closing the door carefully behind him. He stretched and rubbed his neck, running his hand through already untidy hair. He was wearing the unofficial uniform of all SCREW activists – tough black jacket and trousers with plenty of pockets, without insignia. From a distance they could be mistaken for militia.
’Ah, Will, good.’ He accepted the mug Will offered him and yawned. ‘We’ll be having a briefing in half an hour. I’d get yourself something to eat while you can, you’re going to be busy tonight.’
Through the closed door, Will could hear a female voice speaking, relaying information up the line. His stomach fluttered; he was far too excited to eat.
The woman who emerged from the radio room half an hour later was unknown to Will, though her face tugged at his memory. The Major introduced her as Mrs Mason, which Will assumed wasn’t her real name. She was short, in her thirties and pretty, with long dark hair coiled on top of her head, dressed in a knee-length housedress and a nondescript and lumpy cardigan; if he’d seen her outside of this setting he would have pegged her as a wife and mother, happy in the home. Possibly a Door Knocker; not a resistance fighter. Until she raised her eyes from the notepad she handed to the Major and he was caught in a steely gaze that sliced to his core. He was sure she could tell what he had been thinking. His own eyes dropped as he mumbled a greeting.
They gathered around the central table. The Major cleared away old mugs and plates, grabbed a map from the stack tottering on shelves to his side and unrolled it, reclaiming a couple of mugs to hold it down. While he was sorting out his papers, the code knock sounded on the door.
‘Ah, good, bang on time. Let them in, Will.’
These faces were more familiar. Tom, Dick and Harriet, code names the Major seemed to find amusing; two young men and a younger girl Will had trained with in Cornwall, who had connections locally and had been hidden by sympathisers in neighbouring villages. They crowded in and removed damp outer layers, adding to the moist fug in the air.
‘Right, gather round, no time for chit-chat. We can do tea and biccies when you’re briefed. Will, I’m relying on you to brief Mal. He’ll be our liaison here tomorrow night, fielding communications, but he’s on watch now.’
Four young faces gazed at the Major expectantly. Mrs Mason clearly knew what was coming. She leaned back a bit and it looked like she was fanning away some of the closeness in the air.
‘We’ve been working towards this for years, ever since Spight started farming our people for fuel, hoarding food and using it to control the county, clinging to obsolete ways of thinking – exploiting weakness, greed and irrational fears to keep everyone under his thumb. Well, tomorrow’s the night we start the fight back, and you five are key to our success ...’
*
In her dreams she is light, floating. Faint breezes blow, wafting her here and there, not letting her touch the ground for more than a moment at a time. Warmth suffuses her, a bubble of laughter forms in her belly and …
Pain. All of her hurt. Light stabbed through her closed eyelids, but she couldn't turn away, held immobile by pain. Primrose’s eyes blinked open and she squinted in the bright sunlight falling through the window.
She'd survived then. She didn't know whether to be disappointed or relieved. Sooner or later, she was sure, she would slip away while she lay there on a slab like a beached whale and they sucked up all that was useful of her, her departure unnoticed as they gathered all the blubber and carried it off to turn it into fuel.
But not today.
She was lying in an awkward position, halfway down the bed. Maybe Dorcas hadn't had the help she needed to prop her up. The girl moved her arms, preparing to lever herself upright, but it provoked an additional rip of agony and she fell back awkwardly. She looked down and saw grubby bandages wrapped around both arms, from wrist to shoulder. More bandages wrapped her body, from her chest down to where she disappeared beneath the sheet. Pulling the sheet up, she saw bandages continuing all the way down her legs.
Underneath the bandages there seemed to be a lot less of her. And what was left, all of it, hurt.
They'd taken it all. Not just her stomach, which she'd expected, but legs and arms, hips, bum and boobs. She felt her face, wincing as she moved her arms. Even her chins were gone.
Primrose screamed with shock.
‘Hurts, don’t it?’ Alise was sitting up in her own bed, munching on home-made shortbread, dressed in one of the enormous surgical gowns Dorcas had requisitioned from a hospital, that made it less of a chore for her staff to wash the inmates. It gaped, and crumbs dropped into her ample cleavage. She plucked them out and licked them daintily from her finger. ‘You’d think we’d get used to it, but hurts like a bitch every time.’
‘What’s all the commotion about?’ Dorcas bustled through the door, red-faced from running up the stairs.
Grief and agony clogged Primrose’s throat; she couldn’t speak. The best she could manage was a wail.
‘It hurts,’ Alise explained, using a thumb to indicate Primrose.
‘Well, there’s no need to make such a fuss! Of course it’ll be a bit uncomfortable for a while. I’ll go get something to help, and we’ll start some compression going when I have a minute. Then I’ll get you something to eat. You’ve been out for two days, you must be starved.’
Uncomfortable? Was she crazy? Slumped and twisted, feeling diminished, all Primrose could do was weep.
Groomed for the farm from a young age, Primrose had been picked out from her six siblings as the one who might fulfil her parents’ ambitions to escape the poverty that blighted their neighbours, the village, the whole of the devolved county of Devon. Distracted by constant, gnawing hunger, made worse by the hours of housework she did every afternoon, Primrose didn’t notice at first that her portions at dinner had become larger; that she was the only one to get extra treats of dripping, biscuits or honey in her tea, or was offered the bits and pieces left over from preparing meals with her mother.
It was one of her brothers who pointed it out, pinching the ample flesh of her upper arm and hissing into her ear how unfair it was, what had she done to deserve it, fat cow? It was mortifying to realise, looking into the eyes of the others scrunched up in the bed they all shared, that they all felt the same way. Next day she’d asked her parents to work in the fields with the others and had refused a special treat of sugar. A week later she was here at the farm. She was eleven years old.
Five years later and here she was still, wheezing and shuffling along the landing towards the bathroom and the bucket, tripped out on poppy juice for the pain. Somewhere downstairs she could hear music playing. Her tormentors were down there, having a laugh and listening to music playing on machinery paid for by her rendered fat, while she was suffering to keep it playing a little longer, and to fuel the cars driven by a select few. How could this be fair? How could she ever have thought it was fair?
*
The buckets were heavy and banged against her shins as Dorcas backed cautiously through the door to the cellar, pivoting on the spot to be sure of not taking a tumble down the steep stone steps that led from the kitchen. She gave soft grunts of effort at each tread, taking care not to spill any of the buckets’ contents. The fat was solid at room temperature, but could still leave a slimy mess, treacherous underfoot.
The smell from the rendering room had permeated the stairwell and she wrinkled her nose in disgust, taking shallow breaths. At the bottom of the stairs was a screen made up of old strips of plastic, to keep flies and other insects out, and here she turned and backed through. It was stiflingly hot on the other side; Agnes had already lit the stove and was warming the pan they would use to melt down the fat Dorcas was delivering. Tiny vents high in the wall were inadequate to remove all the smoke escaping the chimney and the room was slightly hazed.
‘Right girl, you get this lot started, I’ve another bucket to bring down.’
Carrying buckets was more menial
work than Dorcas liked her girls to see her do. It was important to her that she maintain her status as someone above that sort of thing, but Ivy was off with the flu and Spight was complaining he didn’t have enough fuel to get the next supply run in to the village, so needs must. And she hated the rendering room and its smells and smoke. Better to do the donkey work than stir the blubber as it rendered down to oil.
Dorcas poured the blood-threaded lumps of yellow, waxy fat out of the buckets and into the pan, scraping out the residue with a metal spoon, then handed the spoon to Agnes, who started poking around and distributing it more evenly.
‘Mind you don’t let it burn,’ Dorcas admonished her, before starting the journey back up the stairs, empty buckets banging carelessly together. ‘I’ve got to go take care of our prize cow. She’ll be shipped out soon enough and she’s got to be fit to travel.’
*
The compression bandages were helping a bit. So was the poppy juice Dorcas had been trotting in with every four hours. It was helping so much that Primrose had spat the last dose into a water glass and hidden it on the windowsill, behind the curtain above her bed, keeping it for later. Because Primrose had a plan. She had to get out of here, and she had to do it tonight while everyone thought she was in too much pain to move. Hopefully, she could stash enough poppy juice to see her through the escape. She could still remember how difficult it had been walking the last time; at least this time, she might be in pain from the dozens of healing punctures in her flesh, but she wouldn’t be carrying so much weight.
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