Chapter 8: Ruth (8378)
The rooms where they kept the slaves in Merrick College felt
like a run-down old folk’s home, or that’s what Helen thought at least. Or
maybe one of the tatty hostels she had ran in Australia. The walls were nicotine
stained, the furniture was all broken and the bedrooms were never cleaned.
When not in her own room, she spent most of her time in the
small communal room in the company of Melissa and Tina. Melissa smoked if she
could get her hands on some cigarettes while Tina had picked up some knitting that
had been left by one of the former occupants. While the other two women kept
themselves busy, Helen talked.
‘It’s been over two weeks we’ve been kept here. They’ve not
given us anything to do. I didn’t mind it in the orange groves. At least we
were out in the sun.’
They were in a basement area, the Slave Quarters, they were
called. Helen didn’t even have a window to look out of.
The only other woman in the Quarters was an old lady called Holly.
She had arrived the night before and had seemed to know her way around.
‘The Temple doesn’t have overseers and doesn’t employ slaves,’
Holly informed her. ‘This is just a holding area.’
‘Holding for what though?’
‘Until you are reassigned,’ said Holly with a shrug. She was
white skinned with dark grey hair, a skinny old thing in a worn-out cardigan.
‘I was through here six months ago. We just await disposal. Church slaves,
council slaves, we can wait for months. Just relax and enjoy the peace and
quiet.’
‘Await disposal? What sort of talk is that? My God! How
quickly humanity got used to slavery again, don’t you think? Just two years
ago, people we thought of as friends and neighbours are now treating us like… I
don’t know, gardening equipment. Tools. Beasts of burden.’
Holly just looked down at her hands. Any spirit of defiance
had long since left her and she did not care for Helen’s tone.
‘They don’t all get reassigned,’ remarked Melissa. ‘Dat what
I heard.’
‘I heard that too,’ agreed Helen, lowering her voice. ‘This
is where people in Evermarch sent their slaves that they don’t want any more or
have been too badly behaved. And then the church kills them! Is that true
Holly?’
‘Of course, it is. You three don’t know what it was like
here a year ago. The last time I was here, in these rooms, there were a lot of
slaves. I was here a month and slaves came and went by the dozen. They could
tell you where they had come from, but not where they were going. Last year Angster
Stadium was used for executions, and they killed heretics, curfew-breakers,
runaway slaves, Sunday-workers. All the time. I learned to keep my head down,
just do my work and say nothing. The Stadium is closed now – God’s mercy – I
think they either ran out of people to kill, or everyone has learned how to survive
in this world like I have.’
Melissa handed a packet of cigarettes to Holly who took one
and lit it. She smoked the cigarette in a fussy, old-womanish way, holding it
like a pen.
‘Now if anyone is executed - they do it out of the way,
somewhere in the College.’
Helen shuddered. ‘No Red Cross, no phone calls. Apart from
the witch burnings and the constant threat of being beaten to death in your
sleep we were better off on the farm. No TV, just a few old books and
magazines. There are more vermin down here than there were on the farm. If I
get to speak to someone, I’m going to have a word with them. It’s a disgrace
this place. It’s…’
Helen stopped talking, a clanging sound out in the corridor
heralded the opening of the door at the top of the stairs. There was no clock
in the room. ‘It’s not dinner time already, is it?’
They heard voices outside, but none of them dared to move
from where they were.
The door was gently opened, and a tall young guard stepped
into the room. He was dressed in the attire of a Temple Guard, with body armour
and a sword at his waste. He had no gun with him, but his looming presence made
Helen start to physically tremble. Tina scuttled out of her chair and went to
hide behind Melissa.
‘Hey hey!’ said the guard holding up his hands. ‘Don’t worry
about me ladies... Oh, hello Mrs Banks.’
‘Hello Nathan,’ said Holly who stubbed out her cigarette
then came to give the guard a hug. ‘How’s your mum?’
‘She’s good Mrs Banks. She’s very happy now that Randy is
back from the war. That’s my younger brother, I don’t think you’ve met him.’
‘You’ve brough my papers?’
‘Yeah, yeah. For all four of you. They’ve finally decided
what to do with everyone that came in from Goldengreens. It made a back log.
That’s why you three have had to wait. Well, it’s time to go now. Get
yourselves ready and I’ll be back in an hour to collect you.’
‘Where are we going?’ asked Helen.
‘You are all going to farms. Holly goes to The Mains of
Dunlechie, you three to The Shielings north of Glenmaisey.’
None of them owned anything other than the clothes that they
wore, so it was not long before they were all bundled into the back of a large
church car. The guard listened to pirate radio until they lost the signal
outside Evermarch and then his own music after that. Holly was first to be
dropped off and after that Helen sat in the front. The guard did not seem to
mind, but he did tell Melissa not to smoke when she got her cigarettes out.
‘It’s pretty remote up here,’ he told them as they drove up
into the hills. ‘The Shielings is thirteen miles from the nearest village. It
gets snowed it every winter. It’s peaceful though, and you are away from all
the nonsense.’
The car wound its way up through quaint looking Scottish
villages, past farms, over old stone bridges until, in the dark winter evening,
it was on a single lane road that followed a river into an area of flat
farmland surrounded by a ring of looming flat-topped hills visible only due to
the starlight they blocked out.
As their journey ended Helen worked up the courage to
address the guard directly.
‘You seem like a nice guy. Please, can you contact my
husband Ray Lorric and tell him where I am?’
He gestured at the glove compartment. ‘Yeah, yeah. There is
pen and paper in there, write his details down. Same for you two in the back if
you have anyone you want to send word to.’
***
Ruth was from a family of rich landowners. The Sauchen’s
owned several farms in the Glenkens and while no one had expected all that much
from her (she was the youngest in a family of six) they had not expected her to
marry as she had.
Her husband, Owen, was of the Free Church, and was a devote
man of deep religious principle. He was also a good man (back then) and her
father had liked him, even though it had meant his daughter joining a Church
that was viewed with baffled suspicion by the people of the Glenkens. The
wedding had gone well, and a photo of them together on the church steps still
hung over the fireplace in the living room. Owen stood tall and handsome in his
kilt and Argyll jacket, a confident smile on his broad face, his unruly blonde
hair combed down behind his ears. Ruth was in a white dress vaguely in a
Princess Dianna style that looked more dated as each year passed. In the photo
she was not smiling, her freckled face is stern, her eyes looking directly down
the camera lens.
The Sauchen’s decided that Ruth and Owen could have the
remote Sheilings Farm and after they were married, they moved in and started
their new life. It was a large holding up in the hills consisting of a house,
several outbuildings, barns, and sheds. A small cottage about half a mile away
was home to a shepherd and his family.
Despite how isolated it was, life on the farm had been good
- to begin with. Owen was not from landed stock, his parents were from
Ayrshire, his father had been a car mechanic, so it was a pleasant surprise for
the Sauchen’s that he had taken to the running of the farm so well.
There was so much work to do on the Sheilings that in the
summer that they would hire in men from the village to help with the dipping
and shearing of the sheep. In the winter there was less to do, and it was then
that Owen would turn inward, studying the Bible, and other dense texts
recommend to the congregation of the Free Church, great tomes printed in small
letters on thin paper, bound in thick blue hardback covers. Ruth never went
near them, they looked strange and occult. By March he would have turned so
inward, so buried in his own thoughts that days would go past with barely any
communication between them and just as it was getting to the point where Ruth
could no longer stand it, spring would come, and the rhythm of the farm would
bring him back down to reality once more.
When their son was born, things inevitably got worse. David
arrived in September so his crying through the following winter tormented Owen
so much that he converted one of the outbuildings into a cottage and went to
live in there.
That winter was the worst of their marriage. They had been
cut off all through Christmas and New Year and the baby seemed to never stop
crying. Ruth had called out the doctor, but he had told her it was just teething
pain. One night, she had been so tired, so thoroughly worn out, that she had
gone over to Owen’s cottage to ask him to take his son for a few hours so that
she could get some sleep. He had refused, they had argued. He had then slammed
the door on her and David, leaving her out in the snow in her dressing gown and
slippers.
He came to the kitchen in the main house the next morning
and delivered a lecture on not disturbing him during his devotions. Still tired
and resentful she answered back. Suddenly he had started to beat her, the pain
of the blows as they rained down on her made all the worse for being so
unexpected, so out of character.
Later, it was not the pain of the kicks and punches that she
remembered, but the intense feeling of all her happiness draining out of her.
This was the man that she loved doing this to her, this was the father of her
child. In less than five minutes her entire live had been turned upside down.
Everything changed. The joy that she had felt in her marriage and new family
was replaced with shame. Shame and a sense of being worthless, of having
failed, a shame that had to be hidden away and never thought of or discussed.
This was a sorrow that was never to leave her.
He had gone back to his cottage, leaving her whimpering on
the kitchen floor. She had eventually picked herself up and gone to the
bathroom to wash the blood out of her mouth and look at the bruises on her
body, naked in the mirror.
The next day Naomi, Owen’s mother arrived, summoned by a
message from Owen perhaps. Despite the bruises on her face and her swollen lip,
Ruth let herself be persuaded to not tell her family about what had happened or
to do anything else hasty or rash. Naomi assured her that Owen was very sorry
for what he had done and would be doing months of penance to pay for his
misdeeds. Her mother-in-law stayed for a week and Ruth always remembered that
she didn’t help with her grandson at all or do any of the cooking throughout
her entire stay. She was just there to make sure Ruth did not leave or make any
phone calls.
After Naomi left, Ruth and David spent the rest of that
winter almost totally alone. In the summer too, there were problems. She had a
baby to care for and was not able to help as much on the farm and the bulk of
the work fell to Owen. He refused to hire in help and quarrelled with the
shepherd so much that they stopped talking to each other. Ruth noticed at this
time that Owen began to bully the dogs more frequently, kicking them if he
could get at them or grabbing them by the tails and swinging them around his
head before slamming them down onto the ground. When a dog was too old to work,
he would take them into a byre and shoot them.
The years rolled by. Owen grew to be more and more zealous
in his religion, erecting crosses on the surrounding hills and spending their
savings on pilgrimages to the Holy Land in winter. His moods darkened, he
became more morose and quicker to anger.
When David was old enough, he helped on the farm, but Ruth
would always watch for Owen’s temper. In the same way that he bullied his dogs,
he bullied his son, often lashing out at him for the smallest of errors. By then Owen was back in the main building,
but he slept in a separate room downstairs while Ruth and David were upstairs.
Sometimes David would wet the bed and Ruth would help him change the sheets in
the night, whispering instructions to him in the dark so as not to wake Owen.
David left home at sixteen. Just as he was beginning to get
useful, Owen would remark later. Ruth could tell, after twenty years, that Owen
had grown to hate the farm and by extension, to hate her. When Owen’s father
died, his mother moved into the cottage.
With Naomi’s influence he grew worse, more disparaging of
his wife. Ruth did her best to avoid him, taking long walks into the hills or
driving into the village and staying there as long as she could. They never
worked together on the farm anymore, the farm and household tasks had been
divided between them over the years and through unspoken agreement they did
their best to arrange their days to avoid each other as much as possible.
When Ruth’s father died and left them money, it was used to
convert a block of out-buildings into a guest house. They took in tourists and
walkers in the summer. Ruth enjoyed meeting and talking to new people. Owen
kept out of their way, while Naomi always found something to complain about to
Ruth, constantly griping that the guests were always using too much soap or
making too much noise at night. The winters were still hard, but by the time
David left, Ruth and her husband had worked out a vague sort of life that more
or less suited both of them. They had their own rooms, their own bathrooms, and
their own schedules and only came together for the evening meal. Sometimes a
religious fervour would overcome Owen and he would insist that Ruth and Naomi
joined him in prayers, Bible readings and all-night vigils. This could go on
for weeks at a time, sometimes for months. Ruth found him to be at his most
insufferable during these manic periods. The rhythm of the farm had to be put
on hold until it had all passed, the work piling up as each day went by.
And yet Ruth endured. Throughout it all she still had her
family to fall back on. She often visited her brothers and their children. She
regularly visited David over in Dumfries. Her son had never joined the Free
Church, not that that was much of a surprise, and when he turned twenty, he had
gotten engaged to a Sri Lankan woman called Ravima. Owen did not go to the
wedding. They were expecting their first child when the reditus
happened.
The reditus was Owen’s rapture. Everything he had
been hoping and praying for had happened. This was it, the end of times. Now.
Now, he believed, the unworthy would be punished. Now, all those that laughed
at him would suffer. Now, all those smug faces in the village would burn in
everlasting damnation.
When the rumbling of the thunder and the flashing of the
lightning had stopped, the ground had ceased moving and the air had settled,
the news of what had happened started to come in. They heard it over the radio
first. She remembered the absurdly calm voice of the announcer, talking from
BBC Manchester (now incredibly just forty-five miles away), telling them that
God had miraculously returned. That God had talked to many people, that the
last book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation, could now be consulted and
considered as a guide for what had happened and for what was to come.
Ruth did not need to consult it as Owen read it aloud every
night.
‘The Seventh Seal!’ Owen would cry. ‘The Seventh Seal has
been opened! Do you know what that means?’ He would not wait for an answer.
Holding a Bible, although he did not need to look at it to quote, he would then
bellow, ‘And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in
heaven about the space of half an hour - And I saw the seven angels which stood
before God; and to them were given seven trumpets - And another angel came and
stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much
incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden
altar which was before the throne - And the smoke of the incense, which
came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel’s
hand - And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and
cast it into the earth: and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings,
and an earthquake.’
For the first few weeks afterwards, Ruth genuinely thought
she had gone insane. Owen, always zealous, whipped himself up into a frenzy
through lack of sleep and acts of piety that were increasingly dangerous and
bizarre. No farm work was done. Some people, displaced by the Splintering, came
to the house looking for food. Owen shot at them. Later he erected three
crosses in the farmyard. He had wanted Ruth to nail him to one of them, but she
refused and hid in one of the sheds until nightfall.
After a month of increasing insanity some of the Free Church
congregation came to the farm and told him that there had been a call from God.
An army was being formed to go north and root out heretics from the jumbled-up
lands there.
Owen packed a bag and was gone the next day. He barely said
goodbye, and despite Naomi’s tears he did not turn back once. Owen was nearly
sixty now and Ruth wondered how much use he would be in the army, or whatever
it was he had gone to join, but she was far from sad to see him leave.
Two weeks later, Sandy Till the shepherd, his wife and two
daughters packed up their car and left too, heading down the valley to live
with family in Glenmaisey they said.
With Owen gone, Ruth found that she could think again. She
could barely believe that Dumfries was gone now and that the whole Earth had
been all muddled up, but one day she walked up to the Windy Standard and saw
with her own eyes that the mountains beyond had gone, to be replaced by sand
dunes. She dared not go anywhere near the strange barrier that she learned
later they were calling the Transition Zone that sat between the desolate
Galloway hills and the rolling Saharan desert.
The first winter after the reditus was hard, they
were virtually cut off from civilisation. The new city to the south, that had
been formed from parts of Dumfries, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen they had called
Evermarch. To the south of that was a large chunk of Guyana.
Ruth and Naomi survived on what stock they had and the beef
from a slaughtered bullock. It snowed in
November and Ruth did not see another human soul other than her mother-in-law
until April the next year.
In the spring a car from the Evermarch Temple had come and
told them that the farm was owned by the church now and that in order to help
her meet their quotas, two slaves would be sent up.
These were surly women, displace people they called leftovers,
a young woman from Canada and another from Thailand. Both had run off in the
summer and Ruth had gotten into trouble for not reporting it.
The summer after the slaves had gone was the best Ruth had
had in a long time. With Owen not around she had all the farmwork to do
herself, but it was manageable. Friends and family were making contact again,
and what members of the Sauchen clan that remained were on hand when she needed
help.
As summer ended and autumn came, they spend their evenings
cosy in front of the fire in the living room. Some evenings Naomi just kept to
her own cottage and Ruth treasured those nights. She had books that she read
and stacks of old newspapers from before the reditus. She enjoyed the
books, as a means of escape, but she found the newspapers to be too much. The
referred to a world that had totally gone and the memories were upsetting. She
didn’t throw them away though.
She used to go down to Dumfries or Ayr for her shopping but
now she got everything from the Glenmaisey shop fifteen miles away or they grew
it themselves on the farm.
There had never got much of a TV reception up on the Farm
and now there was none at all. She had started buying DVDs from the shop in Glenmaisey
and watched them when Naomi was not around. Naomi only watched the religious
films that Owen had left.
There were a few radio stations. She sometimes tuned into
the pirate stations that broadcast out of Evermarch, but mostly she listened to
the official Evermarch Radio, a border blaster that could be heard right up to
the edge of every Zone line.
As they came up to their second winter it looked like Ruth
and Naomi would have another quiet Christmas together, and if it snowed again
then they might expect to be cut off for months. It was a surprise then, when
the first church car they had seen since the summer rolled unannounced into the
farmyard.
***
The Sheilings is isolated, situated at the end of a long,
tall-sided valley. To get there from the nearest village you must first drive
up through ten miles of desolate Galloway hills on a pot-holed road, then a
further five miles on a dirt track. As you descend into the glen from the east
side of the valley you see the roofs of Sheilings Farm rising out of its wind break
of spruce trees. The farm consists of a large farmhouse, a wide cobbled yard
that is surrounded by whitewashed out-buildings, three big byres and two
tractor sheds. The farm keeps sheep on the hills and rugged Galloway beef
cattle in the glen.
Three hundred yards from the farm was the much smaller
cottage where the shepherd had once lived with his family. Its kitchen garden
was overgrown with weeds now, two windows were boarded up. The sight of such a
desolate and uninviting building spooked them all for a moment, but the car
headlamps passed over it as they glided slowly by on the iced-up farm track and
continued on its way to the main building.
As they rolled into the yard, the outside
lights came on and Helen got her first sight of the farm. She’d never seen
anything like it. Her and Ray had both been born and raised in Oxford. It
wasn’t until after they separated that he had moved to Scotland, and it hadn’t
been until after they had divorced that her and Gary had emigrated to
Australia.
This place though. It wasn’t the
quaint biscuit tin image of Scotland she remembered from before the reditus.
It was a grubby, ramshackle, working farm, with piles of dirty snow in all the
corners of the yard. A strong smell of chimney smoke and animal dung hung in
the air.
‘Where dis?’ asked Melissa.
‘I think this is Scotland,’
replied Helen.
‘You’re in the Galloway hills,’
said the middle-aged lady that had come out to meet them. She was wearing a Barbour
jacket over her nightie and green Wellington boots. ‘This is Sheilings Farm.’
‘Hello Mrs Sauchen?’ asked the
guard as he stepped out of the car. ‘Three slaves from Evermarch for you. To
help on the farm.’
‘We really don’t need them,’ said
Ruth. ‘Not in winter.’
The guard handed over a folder.
‘Here are their papers. As a Temple farm you can claim for their upkeep for the
first three months. Phone the number at the top of page six to arrange
payment.’
‘Is there nowhere else that needs
them?’
‘I’m sorry Mrs Sauchen. There are
a great many more to be assigned. Every farm is getting some.’
‘Oh, I see,’ accepted Ruth. ‘Well,
have they been fed?’
Further arrangements were made,
papers were signed, and the guard got back in the car and left. The last thing
he had said to the three slaves was ‘for your own sake, don’t cause any
trouble.’
‘It always been like dis?’ asked
Melissa as she watched the car drive off.
The lady ushered them indoors.
‘Nothing has changed here since the reditus if that’s what you mean. It
really is this cold and windy up here. Let’s get you inside. My name is Ruth.’
As they entered the warm kitchen
an even older and smaller nightie-clad lady quickly got up from the table and
left, heading further into the building’s interior, closing the door behind her.
Before the door was shut, Helen caught a glimpse of the most Scottish looking
room she had ever seen. There were tartan sofas and chairs, stuffed animals,
several stag heads, and skulls on the walls. She barely understood what she was
looking at, it was like a nightmare set inside a taxidermy museum brought on by
eating too much shortbread before bed.
‘That’s Naomi, my mother-in-law,’
explained Ruth as she crossed the room to the kettle.
Helen, Melissa and Tina sat
together in a row on one of the benches that ran the length of the kitchen table,
watching in amazement as Ruth made a pot of tea and laid down four cups, a bowl
of sugar and a jug of milk. As the kettle boiled, she brought out a tin of
biscuits.
Ruth talked as she pottered about.
‘Well, it seems senseless to send you here. There is not much to do in winter.
You can feed the beasts each morning I suppose. I don’t know if I’ve got a coat
big enough for… sorry what are your names?’
They gave their names. Tina
saying, ‘Tina, Mistress.’
‘Maybe one of Owen’s old coats
will fit you,’ said Ruth as she looked over Melissa. ‘There are always fences
to be repaired. And if the sheep need to be brought in you can help with that.
Do you have much farm experience?’
‘Sure, Miss,’ chimed in Melissa.
‘I harvest de sugar cane.’
‘I worked in an orange orchard,’
added Helen.
‘I never work on de farm,’
admitted Tina. ‘I’m just a girl. I’m only sixteen, Mistress.’
‘No sugar cane or oranges here.
Can any of you drive a tractor?’
They all shrugged.
‘A car?’
‘I can drive a car, of course,’
said Helen.
‘Oh right, good.’ Ruth stood
warming her legs at the stove. ‘Are you Australian?’
‘I’ve lived there.’
Ruth took a biscuit from the tin
and dunked it in her tea.
‘I suppose there is not much to be
done today. I’ll see what bedding we have, and we can air out rooms for you. I
suppose I’d better feed you. Left over lasagne, ok?’
After they had eaten Ruth, using a
torch, took them across the yard and together they got three of the
out-building rooms ready.
‘We used to take in walkers,’ Ruth
explained once everything was arranged. ‘But none since the reditus.
Well, I’ll leave you to settle in. We usually eat breakfast at seven. I’ll ring
the gong.’
Once she had left, they explored
the rooms. There was a central room, which contained a fireplace, a stove, a sink,
and some kitchen units. There was a table and enough seating for about ten
people. Near the fireplace was a rather beaten-up sofa and a selection of
mismatched armchairs. Helen felt she was in familiar territory here as it was
just like the hostels she had ran back in Perth. At either side of the room was
a corridor that led to three small bedrooms. One of them was locked, this was
where Naomi stored the furniture from her house after she had moved onto the
farm.
The fireplace looked usable, but there
was no wood. It seemed like the most sensible thing to do was go to bed, but
for a while they lingered in the common room, taking in the events of the day.
‘Rescued from one farm to be sent
to another,’ said Helen.
‘What that she feed us?’ asked
Tina.
‘Lasagne. It’s Italian.’
‘I aint never eaten anything like
that before.’
‘You some dam fool backdam lady,’
said Melissa. ‘You never been to Georgetown? They got Italian restaurants
there. They got all kinda food.’
‘I aint never been to Georgetown.’
Helen laughed. ‘You know that,
Melissa. Remember when we first arrived at the Temple and we were just sat
talking for days. I asked Tina where she was from and she says “I come up from
Paradise, Miss” and I said “what, like an angel?”’
Tina smiled at the memory. ‘Not
Paradise, like heaven. Paradise the plantation. Me aunt never let me leave. I
only ever eat her cooking.’
‘I aint never known cold like
this,’ grumbled Melissa. ‘It like this all the time?’
‘This is winter. It gets warmer in
the spring,’ replied Helen.
‘I aint never seen snow before
today.’
Perhaps Ruth had sensed that the
new arrivals would be feeling the cold after coming up from the Delta as she brought
them all a rubber hot water bottle each to warm their beds.
The next morning, they awoke to
the sound of a truck arriving in the farmyard. They dressed and met in the
common room.
‘It’s so cold!’ gasped Tina. ‘I
sleep under all de blankets, not even my head out of de bed! Just my nose until
it gets too cold. And I curl up in a ball, I never been so cold in all my days.’
Once they were all ready, they
crossed the farmyard to the main building and entered the kitchen. There was an
old man at the table, dressed in a green thermal jacket and a flat cap. There
was a Border collie sat between his legs.
‘Oh aye,’ he said. ‘This is your
new house guests then, Ruth? Come in come in, don’t be shy. Shut the door
you’re letting in the cold.’
As they quietly ate breakfast he
talked to Ruth. ‘Those tatties should keep you going a while. I’ve ten bags to
take to John, then I’m away home. Oh, did I tell ye? I saw army trucks on the
main road yesterday. Going south. Do you think...?’
Ruth was down at a low cupboard,
sorting out bags of potatoes. She stood up and turned round. ‘Owen? I’ve not
heard anything at all.’
‘Aye well, they were quite a
sight. Like a travelling circus. I’d better be on my way I suppose. Where is
the beef?’
‘In the outside freezer, I’ll show
you.’
As he got up to leave, the old man
stepped back to look at the new arrivals.
‘Jeezo, what did they feed you on
to make you so big?’ he asked Melissa.
‘Metemgee.’
‘Meta-what?’
‘It’s basically a vegetable broth
in coconut milk,’ put in Helen. ‘It’s nice.’
‘Oh aye. Not many coconuts around
here I suppose, but you’ll get fed well enough. Froakall got five slaves I
heard, and Achstone got six. Where are you all coming from?’
‘Goldengreens,’ said Helen, then
adding, ‘that’s in what used to be Guyana, part of South America. Not me
though, I’m displaced.’
‘Makes about as much sense as
anything else does these days…’ the man muttered as he left with Ruth.
On her return Ruth said, ‘that was
Luke, one of my brothers. Don’t pay any heed to the old bugger, he talks a load
of nonsense.’
‘He had no beard,’ remarked Helen.
‘And no tassels on his coat.’
‘Oh aye. Well, the Committee don’t
come up into the glens much. The people around here don’t hold with that sort
of nonsense.’
Over the next few days, they
discovered that the work they were to carry out on the farm that winter was
very light. Every morning, as the dawn light came over the hills, they took a
tractor and trailer down to the silage pit. As the only slave that could drive,
Helen had been shown the basic workings of the tractor and was soon confident
enough to take it drive it short distances.
At the pit they uncovered a
section of the silage and used pitchforks to fork it up into the trailer. This
took about half an hour, the warm fermented hay pungent in their nostrils and
steaming in the winter air.
Next, they drove the tractor down
to the fields where the ‘beasts’ were kept. These were beef cattle, last year’s
bullocks grown fat and strong after missing their trip to the slaughterhouse after
the reditus. Now they were slaughtered one at a time to feed Ruth and
her brothers, or the meat sold to buy farm supplies and other food not grown on
the farm.
Melissa and Tina crowded into the
cab of the tractor to keep warm against the heater, jumping out when they had
arrived to get into the trailer and fork the silage out onto the ground or
feeding bins for the hungry cattle.
It was cold work, and they were
always shivering when they had brought back the tractor to the byre. Here they
were always greeted by Jed the Peg, barking happily, jumping up at them. He was
a three-legged collie who had turned up at the farm not long after Owen had
left and was now kept with the other dogs. He didn’t work, but he was friendly
and well liked, to the extent that even Naomi tolerated his presence and drain
on the food supply. He lived in the disused tractor shed under a broken-down
old hay-baler.
‘Dis dog can really move!’ Melissa
would exclaim as Jed came racing across the yard to greet them, hoping along at
speed on his one back leg.
From start to finish though, the
whole exercise only took three hours so after a long lunch they would be given
other outdoor chores to do that required the light of day. Mending fences, feeding
neeps to the sheep, feeding the dogs, the chickens and the two plump porkers
that lived in the pigsty behind Naomi’s cottage.
The days were short and as it grew
dark in the afternoon they came in for their dinner, which was always tasty and
filling, much better than the slop they had been fed at Develde. Ruth had more
time on her hands now that the slaves were here, so she was doing farmhouse
make and mend tasks as well as cooking up large meals for everyone.
Then they went back to their
quarters for the rest of the night, a glorious fourteen hours all to
themselves. On the second night they were so cold Helen decided to go back to
the farmhouse and complain to Ruth. Naomi spotted her as she came across the
yard and dressed in a pink dressing gown, silhouette in the light from the
doorway of her cottage called, ‘where are you going?’
‘We need wood for the fire,’ Helen
replied.
Naomi pointed at a shed. ‘There’s
an axe in there. Go into the forest and chop yourself some wood!’
Helen nodded and went over to the
door. Opening it she let her eyes adjust to the darkness until she could just
make out an axe buried in a chopping stump, surrounded by piles of logs.
She ignored the logs and took the
axe.
‘You plan to murder dem?’ asked
Melissa when she saw Helen come in with the axe.
‘Don’t be daft, here, take it out
the back and fetch some wood.’
Melissa did so and soon they had a
huge blaze going in the small common room and were as snug and warm as they
could have wished for.
After five or so days they had
settled into this gentle routine. Ruth did not ask much of them.
‘This isn’t so bad,’ said Helen
one evening as she warmed her feet by the fire with a cup of tea in her hand.
Melissa grunted, she was too
engrossed in a Horse and Hound magazine to pay any attention.
‘It’s de cold,’ said Tina in her
tiny timid voice. ‘I don’t tink I could eva get used to de cold.’
‘It gets warmer in the spring, or
at least it should, who knows these days, but even in Scotland the summers
could be very nice.’
‘And de beasts are out in de
cold,’ commented Tina. ‘And Jed won’t come in to de warm. He like it under his
engin’.’
Melissa laughed. ‘He a workin’
dog, Tina. He know his place is not here with the people.’
‘He a clever fellow, I swear. He look
at me like he knows. And he herd up the chickens when it’s time for them to go
in their coop. No one tell him, he just do it for fun.’
‘Collies are very intelligent
dogs,’ agreed Helen. ‘We had one once. It used to…’
There was a knock at the door and
Helen got up and opened it. Ruth came in with a bin bag full of clothes.
‘Some more stuff that might fit
you,’ she explained. ‘Oh, and Tim is coming over tomorrow to look at your
plumbing, so you can have a proper bath in here.’
Melissa looked up from her place
by the lamp at the back of the room. ‘Miss Ruth. You have all deez magazines,
but no horse?’
‘Oh, well. I used to, before I was
married,’ replied Ruth. ‘Horses used to be a big thing around here. I used to
go on big rides. Not on hunts, but that sort of thing. When my last horse died
of old age, I didn’t get another one. I’m a bit old for it now anyway.’
As she spoke, Ruth used the big
steel poker on the fire, moving the wood to catch the flames. ‘You can help
yourself to logs in the woodshed. Just don’t let Naomi see you.’
Once the fire was to her
satisfaction she straightened up, leaned the poke by the fireplace and dusted
off her hands. She then headed for the door, but before leaving she turned and
said, ‘keep your door locked tonight. Don’t worry too much, but there are
stories going around that the Fire Foxes have crossed the Zone line again.’
Tina looked alarmed. ‘What’s a
fire fox?’
‘They are heretics on the other
side of the Zone line up beyond the Windy Standard. They’ve not done anything yet,
but they’ve been spotted. Last year they burned down three farms, the nearest
was Hamilton’s about ten miles away. They burn the animals as well, it was just
like when we had foot and mouth, big pyres of beasts burnt with petrol. Awful
business. The fencibles will see them off don’t worry, but keep your door
locked anyway.’
Tina slept with Helen that night
and Melissa slept with the poker.
***
On Christmas Day, Ray Lorric came
to the farm, driving up the snow clogged track in an old Honda Civic. By now
the slaves were eating their meals separately in their own quarters. This was
all very inconvenient for everyone, but Naomi had insisted. It was God’s will,
she had announced, that slavery was back, and slaves should be treated as
slaves, not as house guests.
Ruth had met him at the door, he
had phoned ahead and although she had not really approved, she had let him
come. ‘It’s not that I don’t want you to see her, it’s just that I’m scared it
will end up like last time,’ she had told him over the phone. ‘The lady ran
away to be with her family, and when the Committee caught her, they stoned her
to death.’
Helen came to the door of the
bothy as Ray took a suitcase from the back of his car. She had known he was
coming; they had talked on the phone several times over the last few days.
‘Merry Christmas. These are some
of your old things,’ he said as he did his best to wheel the case across the
cobbled yard.
‘You kept my clothes?’
‘Not all of them. I’m not a
weirdo, I just never had the need to clear out your closet,’ he wheezed as he
carried the case over the threshold.
‘But you moved house, didn’t you?’
‘Yeah, but the Centre did it, not
me. It all just arrived in boxes.’
Helen took the case at the doorway
and Lorric went back to get two more. Melissa and Tina hovered around, both
greatly interested to see the man that had once been married to Helen.
After they were settled, Helen
boiled the kettle and stoked the fire. He was fatter she thought, and still
wearing that ridiculous tatty old hat if you could believe it. With the bushy
white beard, he looked like Captain Birdseye or a human sized garden gnome.
‘Not a bad set up here,’ he said
gesturing at the well-furnished bothy common room. ‘Cosy. And a room each? Must
be better than that jungle.’
‘You think you’ve helped me?’
‘Haven’t I?’
Helen sighed. ‘I’m still a slave,
Ray. I have to stay here, or they’ll kill me.’
‘Honestly Helen, you are just as
well here as anywhere. It’s not like Evermarch is a bed of roses right now.
They army is back and now God knows what’s going to happen.’
‘God knows? You talked to God?’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
Helen was now sorting through her
clothes on the table. ‘I can’t believe you kept this,’ she said holding up a
cardigan that was worn through on both elbows.
‘I never opened that cupboard…’
muttered Lorric.
‘You and God are best buds, right?
Pull a few strings and get me freed. Tina and Melissa too if you can.’
‘I just work in a call centre
Helen, uch!’ he grunted.
Helen stopped what she was doing
and looked at him. ‘You dare take that tone with me? Look at you, you look pretty
well fed. With the tassels on your coat, you look like a novelty Elvis Presley
gnome. Back at Goldengreens we were always worried where our next meal was
coming from, it doesn’t look like you missed many dinners.’
Lorric looked down at his belly.
‘None of this is my fault,’ he muttered. ‘I didn’t have to lobby for you. I
didn’t have to bring you your things.’
Helen was about to say more, but she
could see Tina was getting upset.
‘Well then,’ she said more softly.
‘What’s to be done? Can you free us or not?’
‘I can’t,’ he replied, holding out his hands.
‘I’ve looked into it. According to the rules you have to serve a minimum of six
years then you can ask to be freed. Or you can ask to stay a slave, but that
involves having your ear nailed to a door, then you are a slave for ever.’
‘Why on Earth would I want to do
that?’
‘Hey, stop get angry at me all the
time, I’m just telling you what the church told me.’
They talked, they argued, Helen
got angry, calmed down, then got angry again. Tina went to her room and
eventually so did Melissa.
Eventually there was nothing left
to be said and they got down to preparing Christmas dinner with the food that
Ruth had provided them. It was a pleasant meal, and after a few glasses of
wine, Helen softened, and even shed a tear.
‘This is the happiest I’ve been
since it all happened,’ she said and put her hand on top of Lorric’s. ‘Last
Christmas I was in a concentration camp.’
‘Was pretty bad here, maybe not as
bad as a concentration camp,’ admitted Lorric. ‘But everyone just hid indoors.
The muta cancelled Christmas last year. People died. I didn’t do
anything, just ate alone as usual.’
‘I wonder if anywhere in the world
didn’t go to complete shit,’ wondered Helen.
‘Do they let you watch the news up
here?’ asked Lorric.
‘We get no reception; all our news
comes from the village.’
‘It’s unbelievable. Everywhere
seems much worse. Sorry.’ Lorric sighed and refilled his glass. ‘I’d better
make this my last one, I’ve got to drive back tonight. Nah, Helen. You are
better off here. There are stories going around that Archbishop Sinclair will
be made a Biblical Judge soon and then there will be another purge.’
‘I don’t know what any of that
means. I’ve been a slave my whole time in this Zone.’
‘He’s already a total bastard. If
God gives him more power nothing can stop him from doing whatever he likes.
Strake is already a fascist state, it was only Thorman’s apathy and indecision
that stopped Evermarch going the same way.’
When Ray was leaving, she looked
long and hard at him, as he sat in the driver’s seat of his car, preparing to
go. Something prompted him to repeat again, ‘you are honestly better off.’
‘It’s just all bollocks Ray!’ she hissed
at him. ‘You try being a slave. And then try telling yourself you are better
off.’
Helen cut herself short when she
saw Naomi looking at her from the farmhouse door. As always, a forbidding
silhouette of an old lady in a dressing gown and bunny slippers.
‘I’ll be in touch,’ he said
finally, and drove off.
Boxing Day was a Sunday and as no one could work on a Sunday
the beasts had been fed double the day before.
Helen decided to go a walk on her day off and climbed up
through the trees on the slopes of the Windy Standard. Beyond the forest there
was a trail, of sorts, and it was here that she had thought to turn back, but
the snow was not deep, and the path was still visible, so she kept on going.
This was where the summer pastures for the sheep were, the last shallow dip of
the valley until the mountain flattened out at the top. This was where all the
windmills had been built. In the distance she could see them standing against
the clear blue sky.
They sat motionless and unmaintained now, having gone still
the day the reditus struck and cut them off from whatever it was they
needed to work. Some of them, at the back, were right on the Zone line, she
could see their twisted shapes through the zonal haze.
She had been told that beyond the Zone line there was
desert, perhaps the Sahara and that no one lived there except for heretics and
the Fire Foxes. They were collections of Leftover people, people who had
refused to stop worship the wrong God or Gods, and all manner of other crazies,
people driven mad by the upheaval of the reditus or who had looked at
Wormwood for too long.
Helen sat on a rock and drank from her flask of tea. After a
while a glimmer of light caught her eye and as she focused on it, she could see
it was the sunlight reflecting off a car windscreen. She heard the faint sound
of a roaring engine in the far distance, strangely distorted from traveling
through the turbulent air of the Transition Zone. She drained her cup and
screwed it back onto the top of the flask and hid behind the rock. The sound of
the engines increased, it was coming from the direction of the windmills and
echoing down the valley. Whatever it was, it was hidden by the slope of the
mountainside. Squinting against the sun, looking out from behind her rock she
watched as a distant vehicle, a Land Rover or something, came over the horizon
and stopped on the downward slope. It was about a mile away, but she could just
make out the doors opening and two figures stepping out.
She hid behind her rock, then after a minute she peaked out.
They were still there. Light glinted off something. She had a thought that they
were using binoculars to look down into the valley. She hid again, her heart
pounding, and did not move again until she heard the sound of the engine
starting and the vehicle returning back up the mountain slope.
