The First Book of Calamity Leek

by Paula Lichtarowicz

  ‘Never mind.’ She swiped her eyes. ‘It’s too late now. Everything’s too late now.’

  I stepped up close, and I re-wrapped the ends of her headscarf and knotted them firm under her chin. And that felt good to do. ‘I do miss Truly, you know. I miss her something sore.’

  Annie looked at me. ‘How sore?’

  I had a think.

  ‘Maybe like an ulcer. But not in my mouth. One round my heart. And every time my heart jumps, it hits the sore and rips it open. Maybe something like that.’

  Annie swiped at her eyes. She nodded. ‘I don’t miss her like I’ve lost an arm or a leg or something like that – because you’ve always got another spare. No, the way I miss Truly is more like in the middle of me is nothing but a hole. It’s like a well hole where you can’t see the bottom, and no matter how much porridge goes in, it won’t fill up. No matter what I eat, I can’t stop feeling hungry for Truly. Something like that.’

  She smiled bright and hard at me, like she didn’t know she had tears jumping off her chin. I waited for her to offer me a bone-squeeze hug, but she shrugged and said, ‘Well, come on then, seeing as you’re here.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Aunty’s always saying you got the best ears, Clam. Come and press them here.’

  Annie walked right up to the Wall. She closed her eyes and shoved her left ear up against solid bricks.

  ‘All right then, Annie,’ I said slow. ‘If that’s what you want.’

  I went up next to her and counted out a minute. My ear started to itch. I unstuck my face from the Wall and said, ‘I can’t hear nothing, Annie.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘I said I can’t hear nothing.’

  Annie smiled and nodded. Her eyes were still closed.

  ‘Annie? Are you OK, Annie? Maybe you caught the flu from all the rain. It can set winds whirling in your ears, you know.’

  ‘Exactly. That’s exactly it. You can’t hear nothing.’

  ‘Can you, Annie?’ I tried to speak soothing. ‘Can you hear something?’

  ‘No. No, of course I can’t!’ And all sudden, she was wide-eyed and laughing, going at it loud and unsteady, like she’d just learned the taste for it.

  I asked her gentle to come back and take some marigold tea.

  But she just turned to try her other ear. ‘Nothing!’ she laughed. ‘Nothing at all!’

  So I shook my head and hitched my smock up high, and said I’d let her be. Them turnips weren’t going to dig themselves up, were they?

  Except I didn’t get to do any more thinking on Annie, because when I got back to the turnips, Millie Gatwick was in the furrow, jiggling a pitchfork, and looking so excitable it seemed her jelly eyeballs really might pop themselves out this time. Which was about all I needed now.

  ‘Gret – Gret—’ Millie started.

  ‘Don’t bother,’ I sighed. ‘Come on, Millie Gatwick, seeing as I’m spending the whole blessed day running about, why don’t you show me what’s flipped you so dizzy. Won’t be much more than hot water in the turnip soup tonight.’

  Millie tugged me back to the yard and into the mending room. Truly’s straw still lay flat on the floor, and it wasn’t like I wanted to see that. But Millie pointed up at the roof beam. ‘Look! She ain’t dead. Or been eaten by that sneaky cat!’

  It was Gretel, course. Poking her ratty nose out of a red satin shoe.

  Well, I had to whistle at that. ‘Didn’t I say she was a clever one? Wait till Sandra finds out that’s where her shoe got to!’

  Gretel rubbed her whiskers, and Devil take me if she didn’t wink at us before she turned and popped back inside the shoe.

  ‘Looks thinner for it,’ I said, laughing.

  Millie giggled. ‘But Clam, you mustn’t tell no one. Promise on Truly’s bones. That ain’t just it. Stand on the bucket and look in the shoe. She won’t mind you. Look at what clever Gretel’s made.’

  Well, I felt so perked after seeing Gretel that, while I was washing off bog at the standpipe, I started thinking about Maria Liphook. For sure she might like learning about rats. So I got the bug jar from under the fence – three horned beetles had crawled on a dandelion inside it – and I ran to the Hole door.

  Maria was hunched in the dark coalbag corner, nibbling her toenails.

  ‘Pooey, Maria, you growing mushrooms in here?’ I said.

  It was a minor miracle how our sister could stand the smell of the Hole without her nose collapsing, it really was. One time we left her with a bucket of Margaret Merril roses to help with the stink, but it only got knocked down in the dark so they rotted. Which was a shame. And more of a stink. And Aunty said it was a sweet idea, but a wicked waste of valuable petals, and not to be repeated.

  I waggled the jar into the dark. ‘If you come on out, Maria, happen I’ve got something to show you. Horned beetles, Maria, are better tasting than toes.’

  Well, weren’t one flash of an eyeball to say for her hearing me. Maria swapped a leg to her mouth, bending it up like as she was all made of dough.

  A drop of water fell on my neck. ‘Fair enough then, Maria.’ I left the jar on the first step and turned around, listening out for her to lunge like always.

  But she didn’t.

  Annie’s speckled face popped in my head. I turned back. ‘Say, Maria, you ain’t hiding, are you?’

  She nibbled off a rim of toenail.

  ‘You don’t think after the Devil took Truly that He’s coming for you? No, course you don’t. Don’t know why I said it. He ain’t, anyways. I mean, don’t take this wrong, Maria, but He’s after the strong-minded first off. Well, fair enough then. I’ll leave the bugs here. Be kind and eat them up quick, they ain’t got much crawl left in them.’

  I shut up the Hole door, and was busy thinking about what a long old way it was back to the turnip row, and was considering on getting an apple from the kitchen for the journey, when Millie blundered out of the mending room and thumped into me, that fishface of hers shaped round a big O of her screaming mouth.

  HOW ARE RAT BABIES MADE?

  COURSE, GRETEL RAT’S babies needed killing.

  ‘Vermin is what they are,’ Aunty said, emptying Sandra’s red shoe into a brown paper bag, ‘and I will not have you crying, niece Gatwick, over contagion-carrying, pestilential dog-torturers.’

  Gretel was sat on the mending room roof beam, snapping at any hand that came near her. I kept a steady hold on Millie’s shoulders while Aunty kicked Truly’s straw to the side. She dropped the bag on the concrete, and set to bashing it with Mr Stick. ‘I said shut up, Millie darling, if you want supper. And as to why that cat can’t do its job properly, I don’t know. Are you girls feeding it?’

  I turned Millie away. Mr Stick had been very busy since Baby Sainsbury’s arrived, and there weren’t no telling who it might swing on next.

  ‘Speak of the devil,’ Aunty said, stopping her bashing to stare at the cat that had come padding in. And coming to lean against the door frame behind it was none other than bog-drenched Annie. ‘Poo. Speak of the Devil and He’ll bring His stink.’ Aunty’s eye fixed on Annie, ‘Where’ve you been, sweetie? Swimming in latrines?’

  Now every blessed body with a mouth knows it from the very first Appendix page that An Aunty’s question requires an answer. Every body ever grown knows that. Except, as it happened, my sister Annie St Albans. My sister who didn’t answer nothing on her bog-wandering ways, but said this instead, ‘Aunty, how are rat babies made?’

  Aunty didn’t do nothing for a few seconds but look down at the twitching brown paper bag on the concrete, where pink juice was starting to leak out the bottom. ‘I’m so sorry, Annie. Did you just ask me a question?’

  ‘I understand rat babies need killing. I just wondered how they are made, is all. Only I’ve been thinking—’

  ‘Thinking? I don’t remember writing that on the duty list today.’ Aunty winked at me and leaned the correcting stick against the wall. ‘I’ll just pop Mr Stick down to give him a breath
er, in case he’s needed shortly, Annie, and in the meantime, I’ll give you one last chance. I said, “Poo, have you been swimming in the latrines” – and you, my sweetest of peas, were going to answer—’

  ‘Annie hasn’t been feeling well,’ I jumped in. ‘She has flu.’

  ‘Thank you, Clam, but I feel fine actually,’ Annie said. ‘I was just wondering if it’s like us in the rose bushes? Are the babies seeded in buds Outside, and then rescued by Mother and brought here to grow? Because how could Gretel bring them in, if she didn’t know how to get out? I mean she couldn’t get over the Wall, could she? I mean perhaps she could have got out through a rabbit hole, that’s what I was thinking. But how would she find the same hole to come back in? And wouldn’t she get eaten up by injuns on the way, Aunty? And was it rose buds, Aunty? Or, I was thinking, would rat babies actually be seeded in something smaller?’

  Aunty, Millie and me stared at Annie. Kathy Selden stopped licking bog off her paws and looked over. Even Gretel gave up snapping for a second to blink. But did Annie let go of her question? Annie who probably wouldn’t know when to stop sticking a headless pig? Oh no, Annie shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘And Aunty, I was also thinking, what about the baby pigs, and all the milk cows, and the hens that come in here? What are they all grown from? Only there isn’t actually an explanation in any of our Garden Growers’ Digests. So will you tell me the answer please?’

  Well.

  Well, Aunty’s eye fixed on Annie like she was nothing more than a trapped rabbit, and Aunty was figuring the best way to skin her. But here’s the peculiar thing. Annie looked straight back at Aunty, like if she was a trapped rabbit, well then, she didn’t want anything so bad as to be skinned right away.

  And no one said nothing, except for Gretel on her beam, hissing her teeth.

  And I didn’t know what to do, so I thought to whisper, ‘Annie, you know we have the Appendix for all the answers we need in life.’

  Except she didn’t hear me. And Aunty didn’t hear me neither. Her eye had skinned Annie from head to toe, and now it swivelled to the twitching bag on the concrete. ‘Someone has got themselves a touch too nosy for my liking. Someone would do well to remember what became of a certain too-nosy sister.’

  Aunty hitched up her skirt and stamped her heel on the paper bag. ‘Kerplunk!’ She ground it down and winked at Annie, ‘My eye, niece, I can see we’re going to have to keep an eye on you.’ And Aunty winked at me, and she spun out into the yard, singing about anything you can do, I can do better. I can do anything better than you.

  ‘Annie,’ I hissed, ‘you know nosiness don’t lead to nothing but nonsense. What were you thinking?’

  But happen she just scooped up that cat, and skipped off out.

  Well, I’m sorry to say, by evening Annie had developed the flu good and proper. Weren’t no doubt about that at all.

  It was the night after we had swirled round the yard under the burka, so happen I thought she was overexcited by thoughts of War, happen that’s all I thought it was.

  We had just finished stitching zippers into covers, and I’d read a most happy Appendix page on C for Clouds and Cushions! The light had gone off, and we were all curled in our straw down the row, our needled fingers aching for sleep, when Annie broke our peace and quiet with another of her unnecessary questions.

  ‘Where do you think we go?’ she said.

  I turned to look at her across Truly’s empty straw. Even in the dark, I could see Annie weren’t corpse-still for sleep. Oh no. Annie was sat up with her fur flung off her shoulders, and that Kathy cat snug like a snail in her lap. Annie had shoved back her straw from the concrete, and was drawing on a board from the schoolroom with a stub of chalk. I sat up and unwrapped my ears from their binding, and I sighed. ‘What you drawing, Annie? Ain’t it too black to see?’

  ‘Only I wondered where it might be, because Aunty hasn’t said yet, and it must be soon that we’re off.’

  Up past Annie, Dorothy popped up, rattling her head. ‘Happen we’re waiting to hear from Aunty.’

  ‘I was wondering this too – where’s Argentina?’

  ‘That’s where Aunty’s going to fight, I think she said,’ Dorothy answered.

  ‘Aunty’s fighting days are behind her,’ I said. ‘That’s what the Appendix says. Aunty’s the one female in the world who no demonmale would ever touch now, it says. Not with a bargepole. And the Appendix also says in W for War that we could be sent anywhere on Earth. Anywhere at all. Anyway, what are you drawing on that board, Annie, only you didn’t say?’

  ‘Bricks.’

  ‘Are you sure you haven’t got a flu today?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why will we be sent anywhere at all?’

  I sighed. ‘Because we will, Annie. Because we will.’

  ‘Does the Appendix say any more?’

  ‘Well, it’s too dark to look in it now. Probably, it does somewhere. Anyway, I don’t see why you have to start why-ing everything, Annie, I really don’t. These questions are dropping from you useless as diarrhoea. Why don’t you listen to yourself before you start talking, and hear how foolish they are?’

  ‘And why do we have to wear a tablecloth to travel to War? I mean, there isn’t one female in the Showreel that goes about wearing a tablecloth, is there?’

  ‘I see what you mean,’ Dorothy said.

  So I had to groan then, I really did. See, I knew we didn’t need another one raving nonsense right then. Not after Truly, did we? No thanks. ‘Goddess goodness, it’s plum simple, it really is. We ain’t like other females, Annie. We are Mother’s Weapons, kept safe in the Garden from the Sun’s heat and His nasty demonmales. When we are strong enough to leave for War, would we – Mother’s Weapons – dress like common-grown Outside females, Annie? Do you see the Devil’s injun army wearing common demonmale clothes in the Showreel, Annie, or are they whooping around with only a few feathers on their redskin bottoms? And it’s called a burka, not a tablecloth. You sure have the flu bad, Annie. You have forgotten all your lessons.’

  Annie jumped up with her drawing board and ran off to the door. Down the row, bodies started to rustle and moan.

  ‘What you doing now, Annie?’

  Annie shoved the door open wide to the night.

  Truth be told, my temper was growing something scratchy. But Annie had the flu and that needed remembering. So I sat up and pulled my fur tight and I kept my eyes on her back, and I spoke out loud and comforting truths for all the young ears I knew were awake down the bottom end, and most probably shivering from the cold Annie was letting in. I reminded them of our fortune, and I spoke of the excitement of the Good Fight ahead, and the perfect roses waiting in Heaven. Then I lay back down.

  Annie didn’t shove in with nothing else then, she just stared out and started up drawing on her board again.

  So I thought to finish it off good and proper. ‘So, really, Annie, I reckon questions about our clothes are something neither here nor there, are they? Not when we’re “The Goddess Daughter’s Army aka Mother’s Weapons – training under General Miss Ophelia Swindon’s Command.” Clear enough, Annie?’

  ‘Suppose.’

  ‘You do want to go to War, don’t you, Annie?’

  ‘Suppose.’

  ‘I’m eldest. I’m going first, don’t anybody forget,’ Sandra shouted.

  ‘Will we get to go too?’ Millie shouted up. ‘Me and Adelaide and the others who ain’t been photographed yet?’

  ‘You heard Aunty. You’re second-batchers, Millie Gatwick, but yes, it is true that none will be wasted.’

  ‘And the second wind toddlers and Baby Sainsbury’s?’ Mary Bootle said. ‘They’ll come and join us, won’t they?’

  ‘Most probably in a few years. If none grow into a Spitting Image and stay with Mother.’

  At the door, Annie kept on drawing.

  Outside, all looked blanketed safe black, seamless as a perfect-stitched cushion.

&n
bsp; ‘Are you all right, Annie?’ Dorothy called out gentle. ‘Do you want my fur?’

  I crawled up to Dorothy. ‘Her headscarf was slung back today under His Heat,’ I whispered. ‘And she had her feet in bog for hours. Happen He might have started cooking a fever in her. We should keep a watch on her.’

  I called out, ‘Dorothy asked you a question, Annie. Are you all right?’

  ‘Suppose.’

  ‘We’ll be out there fighting soon enough, Annie, don’t you worry.’

  ‘Suppose.’

  Well, I reckoned if I asked Annie ‘Are you a spotted frog?’ she’d say, ‘Suppose.’ So I said nothing more, but shook my head at Dorothy and crawled back to my straw.

  Then I wondered about shunting up to Nancy’s fat bottom to get warm. But Nancy had backed herself against Mary. I turned over to my other side, but Truly’s straw was stiff with cold. So I rebound my ears and scrunched myself up tight as a Devil’s hairball in my own space, and tried to put whirling blue burkas in my head. But it was no use. Not with Annie up and drawing her own Wall on her board by the dorm door. So I counted out skinned rabbits for a while, which Truly always said brought sleep.

  I’d skinned sixty-three in my head by the time I heard Annie slide the door shut and patter her feet past me. A rustle said for her curling up against Dorothy and Sandra, and possible she was whispering to them too. And then I heard nothing more.

  ROLE PLAY

  NOW, I SUPPOSE it’s all right to tell you that life got even busier after that. And I’m happy to say a lot of Annie’s questions were answered in our lesson, the very next afternoon. And I don’t mind telling you, it was the best lesson we ever had. Like Aunty said, ‘Watch and learn, nieces, because in a very short space of time, if you do exactly as you’re told, all our dreams are going to come true.’

  Aunty had come along painted up neat in a red uniform, with a little bowl hat on black hair and a neckscarf tied in a bow, and Toto had a red bow too. We kicked out the cockerels from the schoolroom and dragged in bales from the yard, and turned it into a place called an Airport, which is where, Aunty said, we would be flying to War from.