To See the Light Return

by Sophie Galleymore Bird

  On one of the boats, a young woman pushed her way out of the cabin and stood on deck. ‘What’s going on?’ she demanded.

  The Major ducked under a heavy swipe from an oar, looking close to falling before spreading his legs wide to retrieve his balance.

  ‘We’re trying to rescue you,’ he shouted to her.

  ‘From what?’ she asked.

  ‘Being sold off to the highest bidder.’

  She laughed shortly. ‘I been property all my life love, what’s the drama?’

  Spight’s men were looking uneasy, but the oar-wielding guard was edging closer again.

  The Major shouted to her, ‘What, exactly, do you think is going on here? Where do you think you’re off to?’ He signalled to his men and women to stop their attempts to board, and wait.

  ‘I’m going to America to start a new life.’

  ‘Doing what?’ he asked.

  ‘I dunno. Get myself a job I guess. Or find a rich man to marry.’

  ‘Is that what they told you?’

  ‘Didn’t really tell me anything, just told me I had to go ’cos Primrose run off and they needed someone else to take her place.’

  ‘They were going to send Primrose off to breed babies,’ Will shouted from the top of the wall. The Major looked up, astonishment and joy flitting across his face before he turned back to the girl on the boat. He motioned for Will to continue.

  ‘That’s what she told me. She was going to be on a baby farm, but first they took all her fat off, so she’d be all like …’ He gestured with his hands in an hourglass shape and blushed. ‘So that men would like her I guess.’

  ‘Like this, you mean?’ The girl was wearing a very worn and diaphanous nightgown, which she lifted up to her shoulders. Underneath, she was wearing nothing but an off-white pair of knickers; her pale skin glowed in the sunshine, where it wasn’t marred by angry-looking wounds. She was more rounded than Primrose, or at least as much of Primrose as Will had seen in his furtive glances at her. He blushed harder and nodded. Most of the other men on the boat had stopped dead and jaws had dropped.

  The girl shrugged and dropped the nightgown back in place, before stooping to pick up a boathook and one of the fenders lying at her feet, waving them in the direction of a man who was sidling closer, shouting at him, ‘I’d like to get off this boat right now, with my friends, and if one of you twats gets too close, I’ll kill you!’

  *

  Both toddlers were screaming at the indignity of having their faces and hands scrubbed. The younger children under the table were watching them solemnly, sucking on their fingers. The man and woman she had seen with the babies had not yet come downstairs. Primrose could hear the crying of more than one baby through the ceiling above her head. The house was small; she expected there to be only two bedrooms upstairs, maybe a bathroom. How many children were crammed in here?

  Should she ring Will and ask to be rescued? It must have been at least fifteen minutes since she had entered the house, and he’d been gone nearly half an hour. What was happening down at the square?

  Esther was offering her a drink from a collection in the cupboard above the counter. The vivid colours reminded her of fizzy sweetness and her tastebuds craved the sugar.

  She was almost dribbling as she said, ‘Yes, please.’

  The sugar made her dizzy, swiftly followed by an acrid burning on her tongue. After a couple of huge glugs, she forced herself to put the glass down and asked for some water instead.

  ‘Suit yourself.’ Esther took her glass, drained it in one swallow and handed it back to her so Primrose could fill it from a jug on the counter top. Esther guzzled the rest of her own glass and refilled it. Her lips and teeth were stained orange as she smiled in satisfaction.

  ‘So, new lives. Do you know where they’re going?’ Primrose asked.

  ‘I dunno. Somewhere over there.’ Esther gestured in the direction of the Atlantic. ‘The Land of the Free they call it. One of these days Spight’ll let me go with a batch, get myself a job as a nanny. Might even go see if I can find my own babies. They’d be mostly grown now.’

  ‘You had more than one?’ Esther had been one of the skivvies when Primrose first arrived at the fat farm. She had left suddenly, amid rumours that she was pregnant by one of the few male inmates. It was assumed she had been shipped off to relatives to hide her shame and give birth in secret. Her lover had also disappeared. It had been a huge scandal.

  ‘Two girls. Twins. Lovely little things they were. I loved them to bits, but Mayor Spight explained how they would have much better lives over there. People to love ’em – not just me, but a proper family. Not people looking down their noses because I got myself pregnant without a hubby. Proper jobs when they grows up, not just labourin’ in a factory or on a farm like here.’

  ‘Got yourself pregnant?’ Primrose didn’t know a great deal about sex, but she knew making a child took two. ‘How? I mean, I remember when you left, I heard it was one of us, one of the boys, that was the dad.’

  ‘It’s just a sayin’. You bit thick or something? Dorcas wouldn’t break his contract and let him leave, but she chucked me out. The Mayor found me a place, with some other single mums, and let me stay there when my babies was gone. I been lookin’ after babies ever since. I like bein’ round them, and lookin’ after ’em. Feels like they’re mine then, for a while.’ Esther looked sad as she cradled the glass of orange liquid to her cheek. At her feet, the two toddlers had stopped crying and were examining bits of fluff from under the dresser and smearing them on their faces.

  A baby farm. That’s what this sounded like. Primrose felt sick.

  Heavy feet descended the stairs. The man she had seen earlier pushed into the room and glared at her.

  ‘Thought I heard voices. Who the fuck are you?’

  *

  Outnumbered by their prisoners five to one, it didn’t take long for the demoralised guards to surrender. With Spight captured, the fight was lost anyway.

  As the Major took charge of organising erstwhile prisoners into jailers, Alise and the others disembarked and stood in chattering groups, trying to make sense of what they had been told. Will sat on the harbour wall and waited for the Major. After the last of the militia was herded onto the biggest boat and it had left the pontoon to moor up in the deepest part of the river, the Major climbed the ladder to the shore and sat down beside him.

  ‘I’m guessing I have you to thank for getting word out to the resistance,’ he said, and gave Will’s shoulder a grateful squeeze.

  ‘It’s Bob we should thank. If he hadn’t pretended to fall over and told me to go to Mrs P, I’d never have got away or known where to go.’

  ‘Bob? And Mrs P? We’ve got plenty to talk about. But there’s a lot to do first.’

  ‘What do you want me to do? Only, I left someone up the hill, I should go find her and bring her down here.’

  ‘A girl eh? That Primrose you were talking about?’

  Will nodded and blushed.

  ‘She escaped from the farm then? She sounds resourceful. By all means, go and get her. We’ll be loading up and heading back to Longmarsh once we’ve had a chance to regroup.’

  *

  Esther repeated Primrose’s story to the angry-looking man, calling him Trevor. He wasn’t buying it. Nor was the woman who came in as Trevor was asking for the second time who was she really? Why was she there? The children were picking up on the tension in the room and starting to whine. Primrose reached out to the toddler nearest her and tried to soothe him, but he was snatched up into the arms of the nameless woman, who hissed at her and squeezed the child so hard he began to cry in earnest. Echoing cries answered him from upstairs. Primrose counted at least three different wails, then another two joined in.

  ‘Look, I’m just here to help.’ Which was true after a fashion. She was becoming too unnerved to lie now and had to put her hands under her legs, so no one could see they were starting to shake. What on earth had she been thinking, coming into
the house?

  Looming over her where she sat at the table, Trevor was big and real and his anger and suspicion was terrifying as he snarled, ‘We don’t need help.’

  All the children in the kitchen were crying now. Esther looked confused and was looking from Primrose to Trevor and back again.

  ‘I’ll go then. Don’t worry, I won’t get you in trouble with Spight. I’ll just tell him everything is, you know, fine. He can send someone else when he’s ready for you.’ Primrose stood up. The woman with the child was between her and the door. She edged in that direction and the woman moved out of the way, but Trevor moved into the space she vacated, and Primrose was trapped.

  ‘Yeah, and how we gonna find out this new rendezvous Esther said you was here to arrange?’

  ‘You just made that not my problem.’ She tried to project some bravado into the words but her voice was wobbling.

  ‘I think you’d best stay and wait ‘til we hear from Spight. Sit. Or,’ and he leered at her, ‘maybe we should get to know each other upstairs. I get first dibs on all the breeders. Just ask Esther.’ He moved closer and his hand cupped one of her breasts and squeezed, painfully.

  Primrose cried out, too shocked to say anything and too scared to move. His other hand grabbed her arm and he started pulling her towards the door.

  ‘You don’t want to do this,’ she said, resisting with all her strength but unable to stop herself being dragged across the room.

  ‘Oh, but I do, girly.’ The hand squeezing her breast let go and grabbed his groin. He grinned at her. His teeth looked mossy.

  Her dad used to call her ‘girly’. She hated it.

  One of the chairs was within reach. She grabbed it with her free hand and managed to skid it across the linoleum until it slammed into the side of his knee. He yelped and let go of her arm. Primrose backed away, straight into Esther.

  ‘Grab her!’ screamed Trevor.

  Esther grabbed Primrose by both arms, but her heart wasn’t in it and she was a lot smaller than Trevor. Primrose wriggled free and ducked around the table until all three adults were on the other side of it. The kitchen door was behind her and she tried the handle without taking her eyes off Trevor. It was locked. Stalemate. She couldn’t get out, they couldn’t get to her.

  Time to call Will. She reached for her back pocket.

  Which was when she realised the phone had fallen out of her pocket in the struggle and was lying at Trevor’s feet. His eyes tracked from her horrified gaze, to her breasts, and down to the phone. With a triumphant cry he picked it up and peered at the screen.

  ‘Who’s on this number then eh?’ he sneered. ‘The Mayor?’ His thumb pressed the Send button.

  *

  The sun was still climbing a cloudless sky. The afternoon was stiflingly hot and Will was sweating as he trotted back up the hill. He was almost at the place he had left Primrose when the phone in his pocket rang and he stopped to answer it.

  ‘Primrose?’

  ‘Who’s this?’ It was a man’s voice; an angry man. Was it someone from the rebellion? But he was sure the number on the screen was the one for the phone he had left with Primrose.

  ‘This is Will. Who are you?’

  ‘Never the fuck you mind.’ The line went dead.

  With a rising sense of dread, Will resumed his journey, increasing his pace into a full run. Nearly there.

  She wasn’t where he had left her. The people who had come out to investigate the commotion earlier had gone back into their houses. The streets were deserted.

  *

  Esther was looking shocked at the sight of the knives Trevor had found in a drawer and was holding in both hands; a carving knife in one and a bread knife in the other. The children were still crying. The other woman still hadn’t spoken but hugged the child she was holding tightly.

  Primrose knew she didn’t have much time left. Trevor would back her into a corner and she had nowhere to go. She risked a quick look at the counter top to her right, searching for something she could use as a weapon. The best it could offer was a heavy frying pan and she grabbed it, holding it up in front of herself. Oil dripped onto her hands.

  ‘So, who was that?’ Trevor asked. ‘Wasn’t the fuckin’ Mayor.’

  ‘Probably one of his men.’

  ‘Didn’t sound like a man, sounded like a boy. I can show you the difference, you want to put that pan down and come with me.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere with you.’

  Trevor snatched up a child from under the kitchen table and put the edge of the bread knife against its neck. The little girl’s face, already red from crying, crumpled as she gave out an even louder wail.

  ‘You don’t do what I say, and this girl is goin’ to suffer. That I can promise you.’

  Horrified, Primrose stuttered, ‘You can’t!’

  ‘Oh, but I can. I can do whatever I like.’ He smiled at her with chilling confidence.

  Esther’s voice was distraught as she shouted, ‘Trevor, put her down!’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Esther!’ Trevor’s voice was contemptuous, ignoring Esther as he moved towards the kitchen table, the little girl held under one arm, the knife still at her throat. He didn’t see Esther pick up a heavy saucepan from the stove to smack it across the back of his head with a loud CLANNNGG. He stood swaying for a moment before he toppled sideways, giving her time to pull the little girl away and hold her close, crooning soothing noises. Trevor hit the stained lino hard. The phone fell out of his shirt pocket, skittering across the floor and under the table. Primrose stooped and seized hold of it.

  Will answered on the first ring, sounding frantic. ‘Primrose?’

  ‘Will! Come quick. There’s babies here, they’re going to send them away.’ The truth of what she was saying hit her hard and she was trying not to cry. Across the room, the two other women held the children and looked at her with empty eyes.

  ‘Where are you?’ he asked urgently.

  *

  The sound of several babies crying convinced Will he had found the right house. Half a dozen or so young voices raised in misery. When he banged on the front door no one came to answer it, but he could hear raised voices inside. He climbed onto the sill of the bay window beside the door and broke the glass with his elbow so he could release the catch. Dropping down onto the bare boards of an unfurnished room, he realised the voices had stopped. The crying continued.

  In the kitchen at the back of the house he found two women looking at him fearfully over the heads of the children they were holding. Primrose was on the far side of the kitchen table, holding a heavy frying pan. A man lay on the floor, either dead or out cold.

  ‘Will!’ Primrose cried with evident relief, and put the pan down on the table with a bang. ‘They won’t believe me. I’ve been telling them what really happens to the babies and they won’t believe me.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it Prim. I’ve called the Major and he’s sending a team to help. They can argue the toss with them. I want to get you out of here, now.’ He turned to the two women, and said, ‘The Mayor’s been taken into custody on behalf of the free people of Devon. No one is coming for those children except us, and if you want to walk away from this with an amnesty, you’ll give them up.’

  There was a pounding on the front door, and he could hear the Major shouting his name. Will ran to let him in and found half a dozen SCREW activists including the Major and Mrs M waiting impatiently on the step. He led them back to the kitchen. One of the women was taking a key from a nail by the back door, thrusting the child she was carrying into Primrose’s arms. She shot one terrified look over her shoulder as she opened the door and fled. Will made to follow her but the Major put a restraining hand on his arm.

  ‘Let her go. It’s going to be a whole new world for her out there, let her go to meet it. We came here for the kids.’ He squatted down by the table and held out his hand to one of the toddlers sitting under it. It took one look at him and resumed crying in earnest.

  Mr
s M – the Major had filled him in on her true identity, but Will would never be able to think of her as anything else – examined the unconscious man and pronounced him likely to be concussed, and in need of medical observation.

  ‘What will happen to them? The kids?’ Primrose asked. They were sitting outside the back of the house, on a low wall, the hill looming above them. Six babies had been found upstairs and brought outside. They lay in the cardboard boxes they had been found in, kicking their legs and waving at sunbeams that shone through the leaves of a stunted cherry tree. The four older children were in the kitchen with Esther and the three activists, who were heating up jars of food they had found in one of the cupboards and trying to establish if the children could tell them their names.

  ‘We’ll try to identify their parents,’ replied the Major. ‘If we do, we’ll have to establish whether the kids were snatched or sold. Which won’t be easy. If they were sold, we’ll have to find foster parents.’

  Will asked, ’How come we only just found out this was happening? I mean, we’ve been watching Spight for years, and had no idea. And you …?’ He paused, not sure how to proceed.

  Mrs M smiled ruefully. ’Me? His daughter? Well, funnily enough, he didn’t talk business with me, at least not in detail. I knew something was going on besides the fat farms, and I wondered what happened to the people who just seemed to drop off the map, but I never thought …’ Her voice wavered and she cleared her throat. ‘I’m guessing it started about a year after my son was born. Hardly any crops grew that summer, it was so wet and cold. Everyone got sick, so even when there was a crop there was no one to bring it in. Everything just rotted in the ground. The whole of Devon was close to starving, then suddenly there was imported food and medicines coming in. No one questioned it, we were just grateful. I reckon he kept it secret because he knew the reaction there’d be. Maybe Bob can tell us more.’