Only Ever Always Read online

  Doctor squeezes my arm and growls into my ear. ‘I won though, didn’t I, filthtramp? He was mine in the end. He never was more mine than laid out on that table, filling up with Ketch’s blood.’ No wonder Ketch had looked so feeble, with his blood drained out. Had Doctor wanted me to see Andrew like that? Is that why Ketch had left the door acrack? Ketch were a coward, he said so himself. He only did what Doctor told him.

  ‘Here now,’ another voice tells. ‘Don’t bruise the fruit.’ I thought this bag was on my head for more violence, or for being drowned in the river, like a clutch of puppies. But no. I am being exchanged like a market good.

  ‘Take it away. Tell your Boss if it comes near me again I will squash it, like the filthy cockroach that it is.’

  Doctor leaves. I can feel he is gone though I can’t see, I can feel the grief and rage he is dragging being sucked out of the room. They tie my hands, up behind my back.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’

  No one answers.

  ‘Ketch? You here?’ But if he is, his lips are clammed, his head is cradled, he’s gone into himself like one of them grey beetles I used to play with, balling ’em up and rolling ’em along the ground. ‘Bye, Ketch,’ I say.

  I wish you were brave, Ketch. I wish you could go to market and get Groom and tell him to come find me, Ketch. I wish your blood were stronger, Ketch. I wish it had been brave blood, and had gone in fighting.

  And now I am a parcel, a thing what belongs to someone, what’s been swapped by Doctor. And it don’t matter who’s done the swapping because I am owned, just like I was afore, when Dolores had my name. I only had it back for a little while and I was so frantic looking for Andrew that I had no time to enjoy belonging to myself again, and then I was Doctor’s, and now whose I am is a mystery, but I’m not my own something no more.

  Andrew, I tell solemn. You was right and I was wrong. I should never have signed my name away. But Andrew aint there no more. And it’s a great shame cause he would have liked being right.

  And then I am stung with sadness and under this bag aint no one to see the tears that roll, so I let ’em, one after another dripping, into my mouth. But they know I am grieving just the same because I am dragged and pushed and pulled and carried; to remind me to be a parcel and not a girl, not a living breathing feeling thing.

  I’m delivered, on my knees. I kneel, still tethered and bagged. Someone unties me, delicately picking at the knots instead of cutting the rope. When my hands are free, I pull the bag off and blink in the dazzling light.

  It’s her, the Velvet Lady, the Lady Boedica, kneeling in front of me.

  She does not speak. She takes a cloth and wets it in warm, perfumed water and dabs away the tears.

  ‘You can cry, my own one,’ she tells. ‘You can cry as much as you like. I’m for you now. I bargained and I won you, my sweet child, fair and square.’

  It’s her giving me let to cry that dries up my tears once and for all.

  ‘How did you know I was at Doctor’s?’

  ‘I have a little sparrow installed under Horace’s care. He twitters and tweets and tells me all sorts of shining things.’ Ketch? Maybe. After all, he aint brave and it don’t seem a very brave thing, to be a twitterer. ‘And so I sent my emissary to make terms.’

  ‘What terms?’

  ‘You needn’t worry yourself with the contract. You’re here for good. He can’t take you back. Not without War, and there’s no one wants War. Peace is fragile and violent, but War is worse.’

  I ask again. ‘What terms?’

  She gives one last furious rub on my cheek with her wetcloth. ‘If Andrew died, you lived and I could have you.’

  ‘And if Andrew lived?’

  ‘Well it didn’t come to that now, did it?’ She rubs my hair between her fingers, then leans closer and sniffs it. ‘You’ve washed your hair.’

  ‘He woulda killed me,’ I say. ‘Either way, he made sure Andrew would never be mine.’

  ‘Andrew was his favourite,’ Boedica tells, like it’s the only fact what counts. She combs her fingers through my hair, tugging the ends gently into place. ‘Andrew was Horace’s best boy.’

  I pull away. She folds her cloth and picks up her water dish. Andrew is mine, I whisper to myself. He is my Favourite. He is my Best.

  ‘You stay here and rest. Brown and Duguld are outside if you want for anything.’

  What things would I want for now?

  It don’t take long for me to know that Boedica’s is also a prison. Brown and Duguld get me anything I ask for and things I don’t: oranges and creamy white drinking peppermint and words to read and a long dark dress, hot soup for sipping, cushions for sleeping, oh, all very fine. The room she keeps me in is large, with places to sit and places to lie and places for thinking, and even a window, looking out at a wall no matter which way you crane your head, but letting light in just the same. It don’t look like a trap for a greasemouse at all, but that is what it is. And a greasemouse trapped is what I am.

  Boedica tells I don’t have to work for her. I am hers and she will keep me. A frightening numbness swells in me. I cram apples and oranges and drinking peppermint into the empty, unfeeling places. I lie on cushions and sleep. I count all the things I’ve lost over and over again: Andrew and dog and Groom and even the dreaming girl in fairyland. I think about the music box, whole and perfect and abandoned, and how tight its own longing must be. I count the antibiotics and my crumbles for taking apart and fixing and market and my name and after a while also Dolores and her mother and Pip and Ketch, the river dog, and, yes, even Doctor. I hoard ’em inside me, I won’t let any of ’em slip away.

  So a loop of days goes by: Duguld and Brown and others watching over, Boedica to come and go, all of ’em fetching and carrying after me. And after a while I find out I can have anything I tell ’em, but nothing that I want – the things she can’t give me, like Andrew and dog and Groom and the life I had once. This is what Ketch meant. This is why Doctor gave me away. He knew how to hurt me so I’d keep on hurting: red and black and blue.

  One day Boedica comes. Something is bundled in her arms; at first I think it’s a pup. I can’t see it, I can just hear its snuffles.

  ‘It’s a baby,’ she laughs, taking pleasure in my mistake. ‘You ever held a baby?’

  I shake my head. There’s babies at market of course, but they all belong to someone. She bundles it into my arms afore I can say if I want it.

  ‘Hello, baby,’ I say. I don’t mind it. Its big blue-grey eyes are open wide, but it don’t see me. It’s looking at windowlight.

  ‘Silly, it doesn’t know one thing from another yet. It doesn’t know hello or goodbye.’

  Lucky baby. But then I think: it knows light from shadow.

  I pile the baby and blankets back in her arms. She watches it hungrily for a while. It begins to cry and fuss.

  ‘Hush,’ she tells fiercely, shaking the little pile. ‘Hush.’ When the baby don’t hush she puts it on the floor, not gently. She walks over to the frosted window.

  ‘I know!’ she claps. ‘Would you like to come out for a walk?’

  ‘Outside? Now?’

  ‘Oh, come now, Clara,’ she tells, and she reminds me of me: pestering for Andrew to take me to market, or read stories with me.

  I think on it and nod. I am sick of inside, of stale air.

  ‘What about the baby?’

  She glances at it, as if surprised it is still here. It’s sending itself off to sleep, never mind the cold hard floor under its tiny skull. ‘Someone will fetch it,’ she tells.

  I feel a stirring anxiety for the poor grub, all wrapped up tight against air and bugs, but defenceless all the same. I eye Boedica, wondering at the jagged edges of her, the part of her that wants, and the part of her that discards as easily. I think that she would leav
e me one day as easily, but the thought is thin and don’t last. I don’t care enough, about being wanted or being left. Even when it comes to the baby, most of what I am is numb. I follow her out the door.

  Brown and Duguld join us. They stroll along behind us, as if they were just taking in sights. I wonder if Boedica’s worried I might run. She tells it is just a jaunt we are on, but I see she means to show me the fortifications. We are inside a city block, she tells. Right inside! And all the houses is built together to make for strong walls. Aint no one getting in unless they’re let. Aint no one getting out either, is what she doesn’t say. As if I had the energy, or the will, to run. As if I had somewhere to take myself.

  Boedica leads me through her place. It don’t look like a fortification. It looks like a market. There’s tents and tables everywhere, but they aint selling. They’re living. Talking and laughing and squabbling. One old man throws a bone at a woman’s head and three others descend and take her by the shoulders and cluck and tattle. There’s a whole family together, a man stirring a pot over a fire and a woman throwing slippery meat into it, and children playing. There’s dogs lying round, being thrown scraps of fat or having their bellies scratched. Mostly people are all right, though I see the women stare warily at us as we walk past, and menfolk call their children softly to their sides. All I know of Raiders is hunting and drinking and fighting. I never thought they’d have children, and laughing.

  A man is holding a woman, and she is wringing her hands till the blood inside them turns blue. She wrenches away and clasps Boedica’s dress sleeve.

  ‘Oh, Lady, begging pardon, where’s my baby?’

  Boedica stares down her long nose. I wonder if she even remembers the infant she left dozing on the stone floor. ‘Do you love me?’ she asks the grieving mother finally.

  The mother grips the sleeve. ‘Yes, Lady.’

  ‘Does your baby love me?’

  ‘Oh yes, Lady.’ Tears stream down her cheeks.

  As if business is done here, Boedica makes to walk on. The mother doesn’t release the sleeve though.

  ‘Only, Lady, it’s past feeding and I ache for him.’

  Boedica looks at me and then at her. She laughs a little, but fury ripples under her skin – she reminds me of Doctor. ‘It’s good for us to ache, isn’t it, Clara? Aching makes us strong.’

  I glance from Lady to mother, and bide my tongue.

  ‘Now tell my new pet girl how happy we are here.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ the mother tells miserably. ‘Ever so.’

  The wretched mother moves back to her man, who clutches her hard enough that it looks painful.

  That’s when I see Ole John. The screws is paid for by Bosses, so I guess it aint impossible that he’s a Raider as well as a screw, but I am jibbered to see him here. If he knows who I am he don’t show it. He sees me and looks away. I think those two girls with orange hair must be his daughters. They’re stitching. One of them, young like me, is making cheer, but the older one is scowling and keeps sticking herself with the pin. The scowling one catches me staring and sticks her tongue out like a child, though she’d be Groom’s age and not less.

  Maybe it aint a prison after all, is what Boedica’s showing me, if there’s food, and round cooking pots, and fathers with daughters who prick themselves with pins, and babies in bundles, and well-kept dogs. Maybe it’s a place for a girl like me, who aint got a one of my own, who aint got nowhere better to go.

  When we get back the baby is gone. There’s a gleaming thread of goldy hair, and a leftover smell of milky soursweet. That’s all.

  This is how I live: I wake each new morning to a breakfast tray, sometimes lemons cut thin and sprinkled with salt, sometimes a bowl of freshly curdled milk, sometimes gravy pie. I wash a little (but I don’t take soap). I sit at the window and make words with my readings until Boedica or Duguld or Brown take me outside. In the evenings, there’s another meal: bread and honey soaked in milk, or birds’ eggs in soup, or thin fried meat and grated fruit. There’s company if I want. Most times I’m alone.

  Days fall in together and I don’t miss one after it’s gone.

  There’s things left in the world to wonder about, like Groom and dog and my old squat where I lived with Andrew, but all of ’em belong to another girl, one no more like me than the dreamer in fairyland. My grief for Andrew mixes with my grief for Groom, like he’s dead too. I know he must think I am.

  I aint any closer to figuring why Boedica won me from Doctor, and if she got plans for me besides feeding me sweet and keeping me locked, though I don’t spare much time wondering about it. I know she don’t trust me yet, don’t believe I’m fixing to stay, because she keeps me guarded. And maybe I’m not, but I aint fixing to go nowhere neither. There’s a life I lived once, that was made bearable by having Andrew to share it with. I could leave here and things could be better or they could be worse, without salted lemons or bread in milk. For every Groom out there there’s a Pip, waiting to take a hair, and other things besides. So I’m staying for now, like a snail coiled inside his shell, like a slaty beetle, all curled up inside myself.

  That’s how I am when the earthquake comes.

  That’s how Andrew calls it when he whispers in my ear: Wake up, Clara. Wake up. An earthquake is here. I wake up with tears rolling down my cheeks though I don’t remember no dreams.

  There’s rumblings, deep and powerful. I go out to the vestibule, looking for Brown or Duguld. They are both there tonight sitting on the floor, backs against the stone wall, listening.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I ask. I aint feared, just wondering. ‘What’s that noise?’

  ‘It’s quaking, it’s shaking, she’s waking,’ Duguld tells. His eyes are bright. They been passing a bottle between them.

  ‘Who’s waking? Boedica?’

  ‘Almost up for you, little shadow,’ Brown tells. ‘Boedica’s almost won you, only ever always.’

  ‘I thought she already won me. From Doctor.’

  ‘Though why she would want you aint a tale worth telling,’ Duguld tells, as if I hadn’t said nothing.

  ‘Is it War?’ I ask.

  Duguld seems to find this amusing, and he giggles high-pitched, like a child.

  ‘Go back to bed,’ Brown tells. ‘Go back to bed and see if you’re still here in the morning.’

  Outside the garbage truck clanks and groans, rumbling down the street. Morning is arriving, spreading over the sky like a broken egg. You could wake now, you think, somewhere inside dreaming.

  You know, without opening your eyes, that there is a dark shape in your room, a large presence heavy with sadness, you can feel the weight of it on the air. This shape breathes. It is Pia. She sits on the bed watching you sleep, and the mattress creaks. Her hand reaches for your forehead, but before her fingers touch your skin, she hesitates, and pulls her hand away. She rises, her movements slow with the child she carries in the deep of her flesh. She departs, sorrow billowing behind her, leaving the shadow of her in the room, leaving the outline of emptiness. Perhaps all this is a dream, too.

  You could wake now, but you won’t. Not yet. Not yet.

  In the morning, before I open my eyes, I breathe the vapours of smoky cabbage potch and I know I’m still here. I go out to tell them, Brown and Duguld, but it is them that are gone. I eat my smoky cabbage and the taste stays in my mouth. I wash it down with my goblet. I fetch my pencil stub and leaf and make my alphabets. But the emptiness of the space outside the door distracts me. I let paperleaf drift to the floor and dream instead.

  Someone does come to fetch me to take me for my walk. It’s Ole John.

  ‘Hello, Miss,’ he tells. ‘Keep your head.’ And he leads me out. I pretend not to know him and I can tell this pleases him.

  Everything looks like a regular day, no War or earthquakes here. The family’s there with the li
ttle round children. The baby kicks off its blankets in its basket and is scolded by its mother, the dogs lounge and whimper. There’s birds in cages. In the scraps, I see a hen peck a mouse, toss it up and choke it whole down its throat. There’s Raiders with dogs getting ready to go out raiding, business as usual.

  Ole John takes me to the back of his own tent. He don’t look round or nothing, he holds open a flap and pushes me in. It’s the orange-haired daughters I expect to see. I always look for them when I am out, one always sweet, the other always sour. But there aint no girls. I’m staring at Groom in the tentlight, and Groom’s staring back at me. I can’t believe I am seeing him and that he is real, nor that he is seeing me, looking me over with all his eyes, as if he can’t get that I’m real neither.

  ‘You seen her,’ Ole John tells. ‘You seen her now. That’s an end to it.’

  ‘Clara,’ Groom tells. ‘I thought you was gone. I asked all over. I even went to Doctor’s digs, and found a squeal called Ketch who said Andrew was dead and you’d been sold away for meat. If it weren’t for Ole John I aint never of found you.’

  ‘Don’t say it out loud,’ groans Ole John. ‘I got daughters worth more than you two and me put together.’ I see through another crack in the tent walls that his daughters is out the front, doing their stitchings, keeping look-out. ‘You seen her now, safe and well,’ Ole John tells Groom. ‘It’s over and done.’

  ‘Are you well, Clara? Are you safe?’

  I snort. ‘Safer than I ever been. I never thought to being this safe.’

  ‘Will you come away with me?’

  Ole John groans again. ‘You can’t,’ Ole John tells. ‘She likes you too much. You’re her thing now. You wouldn’t be let.’

  ‘He’s right,’ I tell Groom. ‘She means to keep me. I can’t figure why, but she wants me to be hers.’

  ‘Good girl,’ Ole John tells. ‘That’s keeping your head. It’s politic. Our Lady’s made a contract with Doctor. She’s won the lass fair and square. She can’t grant right nor freedom or they’d call weak after her and make War.’