gather round, no time for chit-chat. We can do tea and biccies when you’re briefed. Will, I’m relying on you to brief Mal. He’ll be our liaison here tomorrow night, fielding communications, but he’s on watch now.’
Four young faces gazed at the Major expectantly. Mrs Mason clearly knew what was coming. She leaned back a bit and it looked like she was fanning away some of the closeness in the air.
‘We’ve been working towards this for years, ever since Spight started farming our people for fuel, hoarding food and using it to control the county, clinging to obsolete ways of thinking – exploiting weakness, greed and irrational fears to keep everyone under his thumb. Well, tomorrow’s the night we start the fight back, and you five are key to our success ...’
*
In her dreams she is light, floating. Faint breezes blow, wafting her here and there, not letting her touch the ground for more than a moment at a time. Warmth suffuses her, a bubble of laughter forms in her belly and …
Pain. All of her hurt. Light stabbed through her closed eyelids, but she couldn't turn away, held immobile by pain. Primrose’s eyes blinked open and she squinted in the bright sunlight falling through the window.
She'd survived then. She didn't know whether to be disappointed or relieved. Sooner or later, she was sure, she would slip away while she lay there on a slab like a beached whale and they sucked up all that was useful of her, her departure unnoticed as they gathered all the blubber and carried it off to turn it into fuel.
But not today.
She was lying in an awkward position, halfway down the bed. Maybe Dorcas hadn't had the help she needed to prop her up. The girl moved her arms, preparing to lever herself upright, but it provoked an additional rip of agony and she fell back awkwardly. She looked down and saw grubby bandages wrapped around both arms, from wrist to shoulder. More bandages wrapped her body, from her chest down to where she disappeared beneath the sheet. Pulling the sheet up, she saw bandages continuing all the way down her legs.
Underneath the bandages there seemed to be a lot less of her. And what was left, all of it, hurt.
They'd taken it all. Not just her stomach, which she'd expected, but legs and arms, hips, bum and boobs. She felt her face, wincing as she moved her arms. Even her chins were gone.
Primrose screamed with shock.
‘Hurts, don’t it?’ Alise was sitting up in her own bed, munching on home-made shortbread, dressed in one of the enormous surgical gowns Dorcas had requisitioned from a hospital, that made it less of a chore for her staff to wash the inmates. It gaped, and crumbs dropped into her ample cleavage. She plucked them out and licked them daintily from her finger. ‘You’d think we’d get used to it, but hurts like a bitch every time.’
‘What’s all the commotion about?’ Dorcas bustled through the door, red-faced from running up the stairs.
Grief and agony clogged Primrose’s throat; she couldn’t speak. The best she could manage was a wail.
‘It hurts,’ Alise explained, using a thumb to indicate Primrose.
‘Well, there’s no need to make such a fuss! Of course it’ll be a bit uncomfortable for a while. I’ll go get something to help, and we’ll start some compression going when I have a minute. Then I’ll get you something to eat. You’ve been out for two days, you must be starved.’
Uncomfortable? Was she crazy? Slumped and twisted, feeling diminished, all Primrose could do was weep.
Groomed for the farm from a young age, Primrose had been picked out from her six siblings as the one who might fulfil her parents’ ambitions to escape the poverty that blighted their neighbours, the village, the whole of the devolved county of Devon. Distracted by constant, gnawing hunger, made worse by the hours of housework she did every afternoon, Primrose didn’t notice at first that her portions at dinner had become larger; that she was the only one to get extra treats of dripping, biscuits or honey in her tea, or was offered the bits and pieces left over from preparing meals with her mother.
It was one of her brothers who pointed it out, pinching the ample flesh of her upper arm and hissing into her ear how unfair it was, what had she done to deserve it, fat cow? It was mortifying to realise, looking into the eyes of the others scrunched up in the bed they all shared, that they all felt the same way. Next day she’d asked her parents to work in the fields with the others and had refused a special treat of sugar. A week later she was here at the farm. She was eleven years old.
Five years later and here she was still, wheezing and shuffling along the landing towards the bathroom and the bucket, tripped out on poppy juice for the pain. Somewhere downstairs she could hear music playing. Her tormentors were down there, having a laugh and listening to music playing on machinery paid for by her rendered fat, while she was suffering to keep it playing a little longer, and to fuel the cars driven by a select few. How could this be fair? How could she ever have thought it was fair?
*
The buckets were heavy and banged against her shins as Dorcas backed cautiously through the door to the cellar, pivoting on the spot to be sure of not taking a tumble down the steep stone steps that led from the kitchen. She gave soft grunts of effort at each tread, taking care not to spill any of the buckets’ contents. The fat was solid at room temperature, but could still leave a slimy mess, treacherous underfoot.
The smell from the rendering room had permeated the stairwell and she wrinkled her nose in disgust, taking shallow breaths. At the bottom of the stairs was a screen made up of old strips of plastic, to keep flies and other insects out, and here she turned and backed through. It was stiflingly hot on the other side; Agnes had already lit the stove and was warming the pan they would use to melt down the fat Dorcas was delivering. Tiny vents high in the wall were inadequate to remove all the smoke escaping the chimney and the room was slightly hazed.
‘Right girl, you get this lot started, I’ve another bucket to bring down.’
Carrying buckets was more menial work than Dorcas liked her girls to see her do. It was important to her that she maintain her status as someone above that sort of thing, but Ivy was off with the flu and Spight was complaining he didn’t have enough fuel to get the next supply run in to the village, so needs must. And she hated the rendering room and its smells and smoke. Better to do the donkey work than stir the blubber as it rendered down to oil.
Dorcas poured the blood-threaded lumps of yellow, waxy fat out of the buckets and into the pan, scraping out the residue with a metal spoon, then handed the spoon to Agnes, who started poking around and distributing it more evenly.
‘Mind you don’t let it burn,’ Dorcas admonished her, before starting the journey back up the stairs, empty buckets banging carelessly together. ‘I’ve got to go take care of our prize cow. She’ll be shipped out soon enough and she’s got to be fit to travel.’
*
The compression bandages were helping a bit. So was the poppy juice Dorcas had been trotting in with every four hours. It was helping so much that Primrose had spat the last dose into a water glass and hidden it on the windowsill, behind the curtain above her bed, keeping it for later. Because Primrose had a plan. She had to get out of here, and she had to do it tonight while everyone thought she was in too much pain to move. Hopefully, she could stash enough poppy juice to see
