‘Antrobus could vouch for you,’ he said.
‘If he could speak,’ Gillabeth snorted.
Like everyone else, Gillabeth didn’t accept that Antrobus already had spoken, three months ago. ‘I found no topic worthy of discussion before,’ he had said on that occasion
– and obviously he had found no topic worthy of discussion since. But this was important, if anything was.
He dropped on one knee. ‘Antrobus, you’ve been with Gillabeth, haven’t you?’
Antrobus raised his gaze from the handkerchief to Col. His owl-like eyes seemed to express understanding, yet he said nothing.
‘Okay, I know you have. Have you been in a room with a whole lot of bottles on the floor? Have you seen this handkerchief before?’
Antrobus opened his mouth and formed shapes with his lips, just as he’d done with Murgatrude.
‘Good start, Antrobus. Now, actual words. Have you ever seen this handkerchief before?’
Antrobus’s cheeks puffed out. ‘Ow . . . is . . . oo . . . em . . . ee . . . ink.’
Col heard Gillabeth’s indrawn breath, and exulted. She was going to receive an even bigger shock in a minute.
‘Just a simple yes or no,’ he told his baby brother.
But Antrobus couldn’t manage a simple yes or no. His mouth opened and closed, his eyes protruded with the effort. He appeared to be swelling up inside, as with something huge and indigestible.
Then it all came out in a single non-stop burst. ‘Our sister, if you remember, has never been partial to the colour pink.’
Gillabeth gaped. ‘Did I hear what I thought I heard?’
Col grinned. ‘I told you he could do it.’
He was so pleased about getting Antrobus to talk that at first he didn’t take in the sense of the words. Then, gradually, the truth sank in.
‘The colour pink. Right.’ He turned to his sister. ‘I should’ve realised. You’ve always hated pink, haven’t you? So it can’t be your handkerchief.’
Gillabeth let out a slightly shaky laugh. ‘I wouldn’t be seen dead with a pink handkerchief.’ She had relaxed from her rigid mood of conscious virtue. ‘We were never in that room you were talking about. I was going to check on Victoria’s old bedroom, in case she and Albert had gone back there. What about you?’
‘I came here because Victoria and Albert weren’t in the Chapel. I heard someone behind a door and almost walked in on the saboteur. She was about to start a fire with flammable liquids.’
‘A female saboteur?’
‘Yes, I heard her laugh but I didn’t see her. Only her handkerchief.’
‘Must be a Swank with that sort of handkerchief.’
‘That’s what I thought. But who? Which ghetto?’
Antrobus was studying the handkerchief again. He turned, took a deep breath and produced another sentence. ‘The question may be more easily solved if you think beyond the framework of your prior assumptions.’
Gillabeth laughed outright. ‘Why can’t he just say ‘Mama’ or ‘Papa’ or something simple? Isn’t that what a child’s first words are supposed to be?’
Antrobus directed a solemn stare upon her. ‘It appears that the complexities of my mental processes require complex grammatical structures, thus ruling out infantile expressions.’
‘So, what did you mean?’ Col asked. ‘Do you have the solution?’
Antrobus appeared a little exhausted from the length of his last sentence. He merely pointed to a particular corner of the handkerchief.
Col gathered up the fabric, straightened it out and examined the corner. There was a tiny embroidered initial, white on pink.
‘It’s a T,’ said Gillabeth.
‘Whose name starts with a T? Someone who would have a pink, lacy handkerchief?’
Col started running through possibilities in his mind – but he couldn’t imagine any of them as the saboteur.
‘Where’s he going now?’ said Gillabeth suddenly.
She was referring to Antrobus, who had started to toddle off along the corridor.
‘Perhaps he knows and he’s leading us to her,’ Col suggested.
They hurried after him, and caught up.
‘Is that it, Antrobus? Are you taking us to her?’
But Antrobus considered the question unworthy of an answer, and they were forced to accompany him in silence.
They must have looked like a family group on an outing. Col took Antrobus’s hand on one side, Gillabeth on the other. The few Filthies they met let them pass without challenge or abuse.
They stayed on the same deck, but zigzagged by way of many corridors across to a different part of the juggernaut. Elite families had once lived here, but not any more.
‘Where on earth are we going?’ Col asked.
‘I’m beginning to guess,’ said Gillabeth.
Another two turns brought them to their destination. It wasn’t any ghetto of Swanks that Col had ever visited, just an unexceptional door in an unexceptional corridor.
‘Means nothing to me,’ said Col.
Gillabeth was nodding her head. ‘It nearly did. You nearly came here to live.’
Col remained mystified. Gillabeth marched up to the door, turned the handle and pushed – in vain.
‘We’ll have to batter our way in,’ she said.
Col understood that battering their way in was his task. He jumped forward and thumped on the door with the sole of his shoe. When that didn’t work, he shoulder-charged it.
On the third attempt, there was a sound of cracking timber, and the door flew open. Off balance, Col hurtled forward and crashed to the floor.
His first impression was that the entire world had turned pink. He lay on a pink carpet and looked up at a pink bedspread, pink curtains and pink wallpaper. The carpet was soft, the bedspread was frilly, the curtains were tasselled and flounced.
He sat up as the first glimmerings of comprehension dawned in his brain. Gillabeth hated the colour pink, but there was someone else who loved it. At least, there had been someone else . . .
‘T is for Turbot!’ cried Gillabeth, standing in the doorway.
So that much made sense. This was to have been his bridal suite, decorated by Sephaltina Turbot. But . . .
‘She’s gone,’ he objected. ‘She left the juggernaut with her family.’
‘Doesn’t look very gone to me.’ Gillabeth gestured towards one corner of the room. ‘Does she look gone to you?’
Col sprang to his feet. Crouching on the other side of the big double bed, between a lace-covered table and a pink-rimmed mirror, was his lawfully wedded wife, Sephaltina.
He hardly recognised her. Her eyes were sunken, her cheeks a hectic red, her flaxen hair draggled down in a mess of loose ends. She was no longer the fair, pretty girl of three months ago. Yet she still wore the tiara, pearl choker and pearl-beaded dress in which she’d been married. The dress was now so stained and torn that it resembled pearl-beaded rags.
If he hardly recognised her, she had clearly forgotten him. She turned from Col to Gillabeth to Antrobus, and made clawing motions in the air like a trapped wild animal. The snarl in her throat was as harsh as the cackling laugh that Col had heard earlier.
‘I think she’s lost her mind,’ said Gillabeth.
It wasn’t just the snarl and the clawing motions. The corner where Sephaltina cowered was a litter of food remnants: rinds, crusts, bones and fish heads. The whole room had the smell of a garbage bin. Dirty marks smeared the curtains and pillowcases, little bits of paper like lolly wrappers lay strewn across the bedspread. There were even half-sucked lollies stuck here and there on her wedding dress.
‘It’s okay.’ Col spoke soothingly. ‘We won’t hurt you.’
He advanced along by the side of the bed, one ca
utious step at a time.
‘Watch out,’ Gillabeth warned. ‘Remember what she did to Zeb.’
‘Hate you, hate you, hate you!’ Sephaltina hissed – and launched forward in a sudden dash for the door.
Col tried to grab hold of her, but she wriggled free of his outstretched arms. However, she hadn’t reckoned on Antrobus standing in her way. She tripped over the tiny obstacle and rocketed headfirst into Gillabeth.
‘Ooo-oof!’
While Gillabeth remained upright, solid as a tree trunk, Sephaltina fell and landed on her knees.
Col came up behind her, knelt and pinned her arms to her sides. Painfully thin and bony, she offered no resistance. She shot glances off in every direction, but wouldn’t look anyone in the eye.
Gillabeth stood before her with arms akimbo. ‘So you’ve been living here all this time? We thought you’d left with the rest of your family.’
Sephaltina raised her chin with a proud expression. ‘My bridal suite,’ she announced, swivelling her head to encompass the room. ‘I was a beautiful bride. The most beautiful bride. Everyone said so. It was my special day. Then they took it all away. But I still have my bridal suite.’
Gillabeth tried to keep the interrogation on track. ‘You decided to stay right here in this room?’
‘Isn’t it pretty? I chose the colour and all the furnishings myself.’
Col spoke to his sister over the top of Sephaltina’s head. ‘Maybe she didn’t even know when her family left. She fainted at the wedding reception, so she was probably taken off somewhere to recover. She must have come here straight afterwards.’
‘I hate them.’ Sephaltina’s voice switched in an instant from dreamy to vicious. ‘They didn’t care. They spoilt my wedding. It was meant to be perfect for me, and they ruined everything.’
Gillabeth frowned at her. ‘Who’s ‘they’? It wasn’t your family that made the revolution.’
‘All of them. Everyone who changed things. They’re all to blame.’
‘I don’t think she knows who she means,’ Col told his sister.
Gillabeth shook her head. ‘I can’t believe she never found herself a place in a ghetto.’
‘I’m a bride,’ Sephaltina pouted. ‘I’m special. No one else is a bride like me.’
It was her most direct response so far. Col jumped in with the question he’d been waiting to ask.
‘And you’re the saboteur, aren’t you?’
Sephaltina was momentarily distracted by a lolly stuck to her dress. She picked it off and popped it in her mouth.
Col tried again. ‘You’ve been trying to sabotage the juggernaut, haven’t you?’
Sephaltina sucked on her lolly. ‘I like the red ones best,’ she said.
‘Destroying things,’ Gillabeth accused. ‘Breaking and busting things.’
Sephaltina let out a cackling laugh. Col and Gillabeth flinched at the craziness of it.
‘Why?’ Gillabeth demanded. ‘Is it revenge against the Filthies?’
‘I like breaking things. I like hearing them go smash.’ After the harshness of the cackle, Sephaltina’s voice changed and became soft and dreamy. ‘I never knew what I liked to do for myself. I was too young and innocent. Now there’s nobody to tell me any more. I discovered what I like to do.’
‘You realise you make trouble for us too?’
Sephaltina didn’t realise anything. ‘Everyone has to suffer. I’m not happy, so no one else should be either.’
Col broke in again. ‘You were going to start a fire just now, weren’t you? A fire in the pantry room?’
‘Crackle, crackle! Spitter, sputter! Whoompf!’ Sephaltina was off in a world of her own.
‘How did you know how to start a fire? How did you know about making a fuse?’
Sephaltina’s rosebud mouth took on a sly, shy look. ‘I’m good at destroying things. I can work out all sorts of ways. I’m very clever at it, you know.’
‘And the equipment smashed in the wireless telegraph offices. That was you too?’
‘Bash, crash, mash!’ Sephaltina reminisced cheerfully. ‘Lots and lots of little pieces.’
Col addressed himself to Gillabeth. ‘It must have been an accident, cutting off Liberator’s communications. She didn’t know what she was doing.’
‘She was clever enough to know how to start a fire.’
‘That’s a different sort of clever.’
‘What about betraying the attack on Botany Bay?’
‘If the saboteur did it.’
Gillabeth fixed Sephaltina with a stern look. ‘Did you write the note and pin it to a barracks door in Botany Bay?’
Sephaltina looked back with the blankest of blank expressions, as though the question wasn’t even directed at her.
‘She doesn’t understand,’ said Col. ‘She just likes breaking things. She’s a child.’
‘A deadly, dangerous child,’ said Gillabeth. ‘She killed Zeb when he interrupted one of her acts of sabotage. Don’t forget that.’
‘She ran away when I interrupted, though. Perhaps she just panicked and lashed out with Zeb.’
‘Phh!’ Gillabeth snorted her incredulity. ‘You just want to minimise her guilt.’
‘No. Why would I?’
‘Because you’re her husband, of course.’
Col wished Gillabeth hadn’t said that. He wished it even more when Sephaltina picked up on the word.
‘Husband?’
She looked down at his left hand, where he was still gripping her by the shoulder. She raised her forearm and brought her ring finger up alongside his ring finger.
Col wished he could hide his hand, but it was too late. He knew what was coming next. Sephaltina compared the two gold bands and let out a squeal of surprise.
‘They match! They’re the same! My husband!’
Col released her, and she twisted around to stare into his face. As far as he could tell, she still didn’t recognise him. But she didn’t need to.
‘I’ve found my husband,’ she said. ‘And my husband has found his long-lost bride. Why didn’t you come looking for me?’
Col was taken aback by the sudden sharpness of her tone. ‘I thought you’d left with your family.’
‘You should’ve searched. That’s what a husband is for. It’s not the kind of behaviour I would have expected.’
‘Well, Sephaltina,’ said Gillabeth. ‘We’re taking you to see the Revolutionary Council.’
‘No,’ said Col. ‘Let’s take her back to the Norfolk Library first.’
‘I shall go where my husband wants me to go,’ said Sephaltina decisively. ‘Even if he hasn’t been a very good husband.’
Gillabeth tidied Sephaltina up and made her presentable. She removed the lollies from Sephaltina’s dress, and, with the aid of a flask of water and a pillowcase turned inside out, wiped the smears of dirt from her face, arms and legs. With the tangles raked out of her hair, Sephaltina looked more like her old self again. She submitted demurely, and protested only when Gillabeth insisted on removing her pearl choker and tiara.
‘But they’re my wedding things.’
Col stepped in. ‘That was three months ago, Sephaltina. It looks odd to keep wearing them.’
Sephaltina yielded with just a touch of sulkiness. ‘Oh well, if my husband says so. I don’t want to look odd for my husband.’
When they set off for the library, she walked side by side with Col, but not particularly close. Gillabeth and Antrobus walked side by side behind them.
The more Col thought about his situation, the less he liked it. Sephaltina was the saboteur, yet she was also his wife. He couldn’t help feeling responsible for her. Even her madness was partly his fault, since he was the husband that she thought had abandoned her. He wasn’t happy w
ith the idea of just handing her over to the Council.
By the time they got back to the Norfolk Library, clean-up operations were well advanced. Already the bookcases had been returned to their original positions, and most of the mattresses. The library’s residents looked up from their tasks when Col, Gillabeth, Antrobus and Sephaltina appeared in the doorway.
‘You didn’t find them?’ Orris asked, meaning Victoria and Albert.
‘No,’ said Col. ‘We found someone else, though.’
Everyone stared at Sephaltina, who was now quite recognisable, thanks to Gillabeth’s ministrations.
‘That’s the Turbot girl.’
‘So she didn’t leave with the rest of her family.’
Quinnea was overjoyed. ‘Sephaltina Turbot! My daughter- in-law!’
She approached Sephaltina with outspread arms. However, her emotions were too much for her and she sagged on her feet three paces away. Orris, coming up behind, caught and supported her. Col suspected that Sephaltina didn’t recognise his mother or anyone else.
‘Where has she been?’ asked Mr Gibber.
‘She’s been hiding out in her pink bridal suite,’ said Gillabeth. ‘Ever since the Liberation.’
‘Ah, I remember your wedding day.’ Quinnea managed to prop herself upright again. ‘And your wedding reception. We were all so happy then.’
The mention of her wedding reception engaged with Sephaltina’s muddled mind as nothing else had done. ‘Flowers and banners and dancing,’ she reminisced. ‘Little glasses and little spoons. Cupcakes and trifle, rice pudding and blancmange.’
‘So many guests and so many servants.’ Quinnea thrilled to the same memories. ‘Ten kinds of cakes. Fifteen kinds of biscuits. And éclairs, macaroons, jelly and fruit salad.’
‘I don’t know about jelly,’ Sephaltina frowned. ‘I don’t remember that.’
Gillabeth cleared her throat. ‘There’s something everyone should know before getting too carried away. Sephaltina is also the saboteur.’
There were gasps as the final word sank in.
‘Her?’
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