‘What is it Hector?’ Gloria Spight rolled over in bed, shading her eyes from the light spilling through the door.
‘Shut up and go back to sleep, you useless cow.’
Used to being spoken to in such a way, his wife rolled away from him. Spight threw back the covers and fumbled for his slippers and dressing gown. He could hear wind rattling the windows as he tied the sash of his gown.
‘Right, let’s go sort out this shit storm.’
But there was not a lot he could sort out, or could have done if he’d been woken sooner. The cargo ship carrying containers of favours promised to subordinates and cronies had been turned away and was making for Dartmouth. Its skipper, Dwight, had been in touch to say the agreed terms were no longer valid and they would need to meet to negotiate a new deal. If he could agree that, he would have to arrange for his goods to be unloaded in Dartmouth and brought in piecemeal, which would cost a fortune given the state of the roads and the lack of sufficient boats. If he couldn’t, it would do untold damage to his finances, his reputation and his power base.
‘Fuck!’ Spight sat in his kitchen, light twinkling off his sweaty forehead and the shiny new chrome appliances arrayed along the worktops, the reality of the situation percolating his sleep-fuddled mind. How to deal with this and turn it to his advantage, or at least not let it escalate?
‘Call a public meeting,’ he told Bob, who hovered nervously at his shoulder, careful to stay out of Spight’s line of sight but aggravating him nonetheless.
‘A meeting?’
‘Yes, a fucking meeting. You deaf?’
‘Er, when would you like me to arrange it for?’
‘Tomorrow. No, tonight, let’s not give the bastards time to spread their slander. Six o’clock. Might as well get a full day’s work out of all the lazy fuckers. Village hall. No, the church.’
‘Yes, Mr Spight, I’ll see to it. I’d better go and see about setting that up.’ Bob moved towards the open door leading to the hallway.
‘Yes, you better fucking had. I’m off back to bed.’
Spight didn’t make it upstairs. The churning of his mind proved to have a detrimental effect on his digestion and made it impossible to contemplate going back to sleep; when Bob returned at eight o’clock, Spight was still in his dressing gown and seated at the kitchen table, the notes of several drafts of his speech for that evening spread across its surface, most of the text crossed out with angry black lines. Mrs Spight was washing up breakfast dishes with a carefully neutral expression. One of her cheeks was red and slightly swollen, the result of a burned slice of breakfast toast earning her husband’s disapproval.
‘Well?’ Spight’s temper had not improved since venting his frustrations on his wife.
‘The farms are going to let all their workers know, I’ve got the Door Knockers out. Also, posters up around the village and runners about to go out with more copies.’
Not many houses had their own phone; landline cables, mobile phone masts and fibre broadband cabinets had been quietly sabotaged soon after Captain Spight of the militia became Mayor Spight, for ‘reasons of security’. A select number of households were allowed access to an intranet. Access to the worldwide web was restricted to Spight and a very few of his most trusted lieutenants across Devon. As a result, an accelerated grapevine had to be used to impart local news that had to travel at the speed of gossip. The Door Knockers were mostly older women, who could be relied upon to call on their neighbours. Some of the less respectful of Spight’s men referred to them as Knockers, but never in his hearing. Spight abhorred vulgarity in others.
‘Right. Good. I’ll want recordings made. After tonight we’ll get the runners out to spread our side of the story.’
‘Yes, Sir, I’ve made sure Dug’ll be there to tape you.’
‘Well then, I’d better get dressed.’
‘What do you want me to do, Sir?’
‘Make yourself useful. Help the missus there with the washing up. Then we need to work out how we’re going to get my goods back – who we need to grease and who we can just kick up the arse.’
The order to wash up was a deliberate insult to his underling. Spight despised men who undertook ‘women’s’ work. Bob enraged him further with a quiet,‘Yes, Mr Spight.’
‘Don’t just suck dick, get on with it.’ Spight stormed from the room and thumped his way upstairs.
*
She must have forgotten to wind up her old alarm clock, because it was already a quarter past eight when she woke. She had to be in the classroom in half an hour. Cursing, Mrs Prendaghast fought herself free from the blankets and peered out of the window. No wonder she had slept in; it was so murky it was hard to tell it was morning, rain streaming down the cracked panes. Her notebook had fallen to the floor from where she had left it on the bedspread after writing in it the night before. She picked it up and stuffed it back under a pillow.
No time to light the stove to heat water for a wash, which would make it two days in a row. She really would have to make more of an effort tonight. But then she remembered the parlous state of her wood store. Bugger. Hopefully Hector Jr would bunk off today so she could borrow some logs from the school.
Five minutes later she was dressed and standing in the dimness of her kitchen, clattering plates and rummaging for bread. An odd noise made her look round. A stray cat maybe. There was a tabby living in a ramshackle shed next door and sometimes it snuck in when she wasn’t looking, though it usually made its presence felt by climbing on her bed in the night and waking her up for cuddles, with wet fur and cold paws. She looked around but couldn’t see the cat. But something was there, moving in the shadows across the room; a human form unfolding itself from her chair.
Mrs Prendaghast shrieked and dropped the bread knife. It clattered off the table and fell to the floor. She stooped down with a groan, snatched it up and held it out in front of her like a short sword.
‘Who’s that? What are you doing in my house?’
A soft, shaky girl’s voice replied, ’Sorry, Mrs Prendaghast. It’s me, Primrose.’
’Primrose? From the farm? What on earth are you doing here?’
‘I ran away from the farm, I couldn’t go home, I couldn’t think where else to go.’ The voice was wobbling.
Mrs Prendaghast put down the knife. This was going to make life very complicated. If not downright dangerous. What could she do but say, ‘Oh, you poor thing. Come here.’ She moved around the table and opened her arms wide. Primrose flew into them.
The girl towered over her. She had grown much taller in the last five years. But she wasn’t fat. When Primrose sat back down in the chair and Mrs Prendaghast drew the curtains on a window that didn’t face onto the street she could see why. Bandages covered the girl’s arms where she’d pushed up the sleeves of the hideous jumper she was wearing, and also wrapped her legs below the baggy dress. It explained the rather lumpy element of their hug.
The teacher knew what the fat farm did, everyone did, but seeing the proof shocked and sickened her.
Primrose was describing her escape, breathless and giddy now with relief. She must be light-headed after the night’s adventure and in need of some breakfast. Which reminded Mrs Prendaghast she was due in school any moment. A quick glance at the clock told her she only had a few minutes. She cut the girl short as she was describing her run to the village.
‘Primrose, I’m sorry but it’s a school day, I have to go to the classroom.’
The girl’s face fell. ‘Do you want me to leave?’
‘Of course not, don’t be silly. You can stay here while I’m in class, and afterwards we’ll make a plan. We’ve just time for a quick breakfast and then you go up and have a proper sleep in my bed. Just make sure no one sees you or we’ll both be in trouble.’
When she locked up and hurried next door to the schoolhouse she found her class waiting, huddling together in the rain in the small and weed-strewn playground. There was no Hector, which was a small blessing. Mrs Pre
ndaghast was so distracted by the knowledge she had a fugitive in her house that she kept making small mistakes that he would have pounced on mercilessly. The rest of her class were either less unkind or just didn’t care enough to notice her absence of mind. Then at a quarter past ten, the door banged open and Hector appeared in the doorway. Mrs Prendaghast’s heart sank as her pupils looked up from their books and turned to see who it was.
‘Public meeting tonight, at the church, Mrs P. Six o’clock. The rest of you, make sure your parents are there. Can’t stay, I have to go round the farms.’ Looking self-important, Spight Jr strutted back out of the classroom.
Well, what was all that about? She had a horrible feeling it had something to do with her guest.
Half an hour before the official break for lunch, experiencing a growing sense of disquiet at leaving Primrose alone for so long, she allowed them all to choose something from the small store of books at the back of the room and told them to read until it was time to go home. She would see some of them for an hour or two after lunch, while the older children were put to chores for their parents, but it would be easy enough to set them some work and leave them to it. The murmur of voices began even before she closed the door on them, but for once she didn’t turn to admonish them.
There was no sign of Primrose in the kitchen when she returned. A quick look upstairs showed her the girl fully dressed and asleep on top of her bed, curled up under a crocheted blanket. Leaving her undisturbed, Mrs Prendaghast lit the stove, hoping she would have a chance to scavenge some logs later, and started preparing vegetables to make soup. Vegetables were one thing the village still had in abundance for most of the year; those that coped with unpredictable weather anyway. Many of the villagers had gardens large enough for their own plots, and those that didn’t made use of allotments at the top of the hill by the vicarage, keeping poultry as well as growing produce. As fresh vegetables were difficult to import from overseas, now there was no access to air freight and the boats came so infrequently, Mr Spight had no interest in them and this was one necessity he did not tax or control. He did, however, run a profitable sideline in exotics like avocados and lemons.
With a tiny, north-facing garden, and a bad back that no longer permitted much cultivating of her allotment, Mrs Prendaghast was often gifted with surplus by the parents of her pupils, stored carefully in the extension that housed the downstairs loo, that no longer worked and was cold enough to keep things fresh for weeks before she had to start making batches of preserves. This early in an erratic growing season, supplies of everything were running low, but she could supplement old onions, carrots, squash and potatoes with some nettles, growing abundantly outside the back door. Villagers were sniffy about eating weeds, but she knew that so long as she could find a few nettles she would never starve.
Half an hour later soup was bubbling on the stove’s hot plate and an appetising aroma was permeating the cottage. Primrose came down the stairs, yawning and wrapped in the blanket.
‘Wow, that smells amazing.’ She stood awkwardly by the table. Mrs Prendaghast steered her towards the only armchair and told her to sit.
‘It’s just vegetable soup, but it’s warming, and good for you.’
‘Vegetables … can’t remember the last time I ate any of those.’ Primrose didn’t look too keen about reacquainting herself. ‘Not real ones anyway. Plenty of chips.’ Now she smiled. Then frowned, as she thought about what eating so many chips had led to. She fidgeted with the bandages on her arms.
Mrs Prendaghast started cutting the last of the loaf and tried to remember if she had enough flour to bake more. ‘We’ll have to sort out those bandages later. How long should they be kept on for?’
‘A few days. It’s only until the cuts scab properly.’
‘Well, we’ll have a look at you. I’m sure I’ve got an old sheet or something I can cut up.’
‘I’m really grateful, Mrs Prendaghast, for the soup, and the sleep. I really don’t want to get you into trouble.’ Primrose looked at her with big brown eyes. She had grown into a pretty girl, despite the dirt, straggly hair and terrible clothes. Things would go badly for her if she was found here; bad things happened to pretty girls in Devon.
‘You let me worry about that. Now here, make yourself useful and butter this bread.’
While they were eating, Mrs Prendaghast tried to establish if the girl had any other family besides parents and siblings, who might take her in or help her leave the county. Primrose remembered aunts and an uncle nearby, but had never been close to any of them, and the last she had heard, before she was sent away, they all had more mouths to feed than they could handle and would be too dependent on Spight’s favour to risk his wrath by helping her.
‘There’s no rush,’ Mrs Prendaghast said, with a sinking feeling that she was getting her old self into some serious trouble. ‘You can stay here as long as you need to.’
Gratitude suffused Primrose’s face. Mrs Prendaghast tried to shake off a sense of doom.
*
When Hector Jr had finished his rounds of the local farms, ordering everyone he met to attend the public meeting, he was soaking with sweat from pedalling hard on his bicycle over the broken roads and green lanes that ranged the rolling hills, and had a raging thirst. The rain had stopped, and the sun still lay hidden by thick cloud, but the temperature was rising, and humidity had made him break out in a sweat before he even got on his bike. If only they’d let him take a car, but he was still too young to drive according to his grandfather, whose opinion was the only one that counted. Which didn’t mean Junior hadn’t been practising in secret, in the part of the village hall car park that hadn’t been adopted as a fly tipping spot for old white goods. That old suck up Bob showed him how, whenever he’d managed to scrounge – or siphon – some fuel from one of his grandfather’s fleet, and grandfather was out of the parish on business.
Junior couldn’t wait to take his proper place at his grandfather’s side. Only another year or so and he’d be able to become the true heir apparent. His dad, Fred, fancied himself in that role, but he wasn’t blood, only married to Junior’s mum, and Junior knew Hector Sr had no real respect for Fred, just a need for the man’s loyalty, and brutish nature from time to time. Junior himself, though he feared his dad when the man was in a rage, had no real respect for him. Not that he didn’t punch out anyone else who showed his father disrespect. Like that time he’d twatted one of the boys in his class when he’d caught him taking the piss out of Fred’s rolling gait and thickset arms, held out to the sides, like a chimp’s. He knew about chimps from antique issues of National Geographic kept in his grandfather’s library, where he had also seen pictures of black women with their boobs hanging out.
He thought about that now as he sat with his back against a gate and took a swig from a plastic bottle of cola. Not Coke, they’d run out of that a couple of weeks ago, but it was imported cola, and still better than any shit water that just came off the roof or out of the ground, like any old dweeb could boil and drink. He’d enjoyed punching that kid, and kind of hoped he’d get a chance to do it again. He’d also liked looking at the boobs.
The only place he still needed to go was the fat farm. Mrs Harrow, chief Knocker, might have spoken to Dorcas already, but he liked to go and laugh at the fat kids if he got the chance, though Dorcas would block him if she could. She said it put them off their feed if he made them feel bad about eating so much, and that made it harder for her to meet her quotas. But she might not be there. And anyway, this was preferable to being in school, which was where his mum would send him if he went back too early. Junior did respect his mum. She was the only woman he respected, but he wasn’t afraid of her in the same way he was of his dad. She had never hit him. But then she didn’t need to. She had a way of looking at him that chilled him to his marrow when she was displeased.
Sometimes he thought she didn’t like him much, and that hurt, but not enough to stop him doing the things she didn’t like. He just made mo
re of an effort to hide aspects of his behaviour from her that he didn’t care if other people saw.
Horseflies were gathering around him, drawn by his sweat. He batted at them but there were too many to dodge for long. He would have to outpace them and hope they fell behind. Time to move on.
The final stretch of lane up to the farm was steep and gullied. He had to push his bike, sweat that had cooled while he rested making him cold and clammy before it began to break out afresh. His grip on the handlebars slipped as the weight of the bike tried to take him back down the hill and he was gasping by the time he reached the driveway. And hot again. Here it was level enough that he could get back on the bike, and he pedalled carefully along the rutted gravel.
The house was very grand, even covered in ivy and with its grey granite rusted with orange lichen and beslimed by the green mildew that thrived in the damp air of Devon, staining everything. Hector knew his family had lived there until shortly after he was born, and rather wished they still did. It had towers and turrets, and looked a bit like a castle. Entering it always made him feel important.
The wooden front door was closed. Rather than knock and risk Dorcas answering, he dismounted and pushed his bike around to the kitchen door, where he might be able to scrounge something to eat. It was open. Propping his bike against the stone wall, he slipped inside.
The kitchen was full of steam and held a rank stench of hot fat that quelled his appetite, until he saw a rack of brownies on one of the work surfaces. He rammed one into his mouth and slipped another into his pocket as he headed for a closed door that he knew would take him to the stairs up to the rooms the fatties lived in. Before he could reach it, it opened and Agnes, Dorcas’s skivvy came in. She stopped dead when she saw him. Her hands were taken up with buckets, covered with lids but still emitting a miasma fouler than the stink of fat.
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