Authors: Sarah Pinborough
We find the bird the following night after we’ve scaled the wall and put the bench on the lawn and are just about to climb into the house through the kitchen sash window. It’s fallen close to the large black bins next to the locked side gate and one wing hangs awkwardly from its body, a gash down the centre. It’s still breathing, though, the small body warmish under the feathers, and for a moment, after Clara has picked it up, we don’t know quite what to do. In the end I pull off my hoodie and we wrap it carefully inside.
‘Let’s hide it somewhere. But we’ll have to be quick.’
We’re a whirlwind in the kitchen, Clara finding an old food box we can turn into a bed, me soaking some bread in milk in a saucer and getting another to put water in, to take with us.
The house is still and silent and we creep through it until we find an empty room far from the others where an old wardrobe, abandoned and lonely, is pressed up against a wall. We make a home for the bird on its floor and Clara carefully wipes his cut clean before settling him down into it.
‘It’s a baby,’ Clara says as she picks up a small piece of the milk-soaked bread and holds it close to his beak, tempting him. ‘Poor little thing.’
‘He’s probably in shock,’ I say. ‘If we leave him in the quiet, he’ll calm down. At least he’s warm here.’
‘Don’t worry, little bird,’ Clara coos softly. ‘We’ll make you all better again, and then you can find your mother.’ She pauses. ‘Let’s just hope she’s a better mother than either of ours.’ She glances at me and spots my immediate confusion. ‘Harriet says that your mum was a bitch.’
I shrug, awkward. I don’t want to talk about it. I’ve forgotten how people still hold on to those early-days conversations. But still, she’s talked to Harriet about me. That gives me a good fizz inside.
‘What shall we call him?’ Clara asks as we close the wardrobe door reluctantly and get to our feet.
‘You pick something. Maybe he’s a she?’
‘Georgie, then,’ Clara says. ‘That works for both. We’ll have to take it in turns to check on him during the day. I’m on washing-up again so you do the morning, okay?’
I’d almost forgotten about Jake and the washing-up and a small flare of jealousy burns through me, but then I remind myself that Jake doesn’t have the boat and the bird and the cave.
‘Sure.’
‘Okay, then. Until tomorrow night!’ She grins and wraps her arms around my neck and kisses me right on the lips before turning and heading back to her dorm. I stand there, suddenly breathless and as stunned as the bird wrapped in my sweatshirt. My lips tingle from the contact. My head is throbbing. She kissed me.
By the time I crawl into my own bed, I’ve convinced myself I’m being stupid and it doesn’t mean anything. It wasn’t a proper snog or anything. It was just friendly. But still, she did kiss me. It’s enough to keep the dread at bay when Joe’s hacking cough cuts through the silent dawn.
‘What the hell are they doing?’ I ask.
The temperature’s dropped over the past few days and I’ve wrapped up warm to come outside, but still my nose runs each time I bend over to dig around in the soil. I can’t remember it ever being this cold and I just want to get back inside and go to sleep for the afternoon. I’ve found three worms and they’re wrapped in toilet paper in the pocket of my jacket. I hope I don’t crush them before I can escape up to Georgie and see if he’ll eat them.
‘Baptising him,’ Louis says.
‘They’re always in the church now. Talking about Bible stories and stuff.’ Will scuffs his feet to keep warm. ‘You never notice anything any more.’
I don’t answer that. It’s true. Not that I paid much attention before, but that was different. Now even when I’m awake I’m thinking about Clara and the bird and what the night may bring, and everything else feels unreal. I like it. I feel as if I’m not part of the house any more. Mainly, at the moment, I’m thinking about the bird.
‘I’m not sure that standing out here in the freezing fucking cold and pouring water over his head is going to make Joe better.’
‘The point of baptism isn’t to make him better,’ Louis says. ‘It’s to introduce him to God or something.’
‘There’s more of them.’ They’re gathering by the swings – Ashley, Joe, Harriet and a couple of boys from another dorm whose faces I know but can’t remember ever speaking to.
‘Wake up, Toby,’ Will says. ‘Ashley’s got his own gang now.’
‘Hardly a gang. More like a bunch of sad twats.’
Joe sits down on one of the swings and the others bow their heads as Ashley speaks softly. I can’t hear his words but his face is serious and his eyes closed. Joe’s skin is blotchy with fever and even with no sun out his hair is shining with sweaty grease.
Ashley’s voice rises as he pours water from a bottle over Joe’s tipped-back head. ‘I baptise you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.’ Three splashes of water. The small congregation smile at each other as if this is some magic fucking cure for Defectiveness, and then Joe stands up and Harriet takes her turn. I didn’t think it was possible for Joe to get any thinner but his clothes are hanging from his bones.
‘Why haven’t they just taken him to the sanatorium already?’ I grumble. It feels like Joe’s been ill for ever. I don’t want to see the reality of the house. What’s waiting for us all. Not now. Not after the kiss.
‘That’s obvious, isn’t it?’ I hadn’t noticed Tom join us. He looks as displeased with the baptisms as I feel. ‘Whatever he’s sick with, that’s not
it
.’
All three of us turn to look at him. Even Louis with his super-sized brain hasn’t thought of that.
Tom shrugs. ‘Makes sense to me. He’s grieving for his twin – of course he’s fallen sick. When my brother died, I caught the worst flu I’ve ever had. Couldn’t get out of bed for two weeks.’ He shivers and turns away. ‘I’m heading back inside. Albi’s teaching Jake to play some stuff on the guitar. He’s going to teach me the drums.’
‘The drummer never gets the girl, you do know that, right?’ I say, unable to stop myself. I’m not sure whether he hears me or not, but he doesn’t react.
‘Did you know Tom had a dead brother?’ Louis asks.
‘His poor mum.’ Will’s small face is awash with sadness.
‘Who gives a fuck?’ My words come out harsher than I mean them to. Why would Tom tell us something like that? I don’t need to know things like that. I don’t want to feel sorry for him. Or Joe. I don’t want to think about them at all.
I don’t get to take the worms upstairs. As we go back inside, fingers and toes numb after watching Ashley’s crazy display in the garden, the gong rings out and we all have to return to our dorms where the nurses are waiting for us. Even for Ashley and his God that he carries with him everywhere like some shield that can save him.
‘Blood tests,’ the nurse says as she snaps on her plastic gloves and prepares the first syringe, as we sit in dread. What do they need to test our blood for? We’re all Defective – they know that already. Are we like some kind of lab animals here? Are they studying us to try and understand it better? I stare at the nurse while my heart thumps. She’s not that old, under thirty, I’d guess, and wisps of her fine ginger hair escape from under her hat. ‘We need to see how you’re all progressing,’ she says as if reading my thoughts.
As she jabs the needle into Ashley, Will goes pale and squeezes his eyes tight shut. Louis sits close to him and holds his hand. I can’t remember if either of them had brothers or sisters on the outside, but they’re brothers now.
‘I’m not sure “progressing” is the right word.’ I try to dispel some of the tension in the room. I don’t want Will to be scared.
I
don’t want to be scared, either. ‘Do we get a badge if our genes are more fucked than anyone else’s?’ I smile at the nurse as she comes over to me. It’s my best cheeky-Toby grin but she doesn’t even look up. ‘An A-Star? A full pass grade in Defectiveness?’ I wink at Louis and Will and they both manage small smiles, maybe one proper one between them.
‘Keep still,’ is all she says as she tightens the pressure on my arm and the needle goes in. I watch my blood come out, thick and red as it fills the small tube. It looks perfectly normal. No different than it ever has done through all the tests and scrapes and cuts over the years. I can’t even remember looking at it before. The last time I was tested I was too busy feeling high over the prospect of Julie McKendrick’s party. Maybe if my surname had started with a different letter, I’d have even got to go to it before they dragged me here. A few more days of normality.
‘I hate needles,’ Will whispers. ‘I thought I was done with needles.’
‘I’ll go next,’ Tom says. ‘You go after me, then Louis, okay?’ Will nods. My heart and stomach ache a little. By the time the nurse has finished with Tom, Will’s breath is coming fast. Tom picks up the book Eleanor gave him and opens it to where the corner of one page is turned down. ‘How about I read this to you?’
‘You’ll think it’s silly,’ Will says, defensive. ‘It’s a kids’ book.’
‘I want to hear some,’ Louis cuts in.
‘Me, too,’ Ashley says, and for a moment I almost feel warm towards him.
‘Read some, Tom,’ I hear myself saying. We are family now, however much I pretend we’re not. We’re Dorm 4. We stand together.
‘Okay, here goes.’ Tom takes a deep breath and starts to read. ‘ “‘This must be a simply enormous wardrobe!’ thought Lucy, going still further in and pushing the soft folds of the coats aside to make room for her. Then she noticed that there was something crunching under her feet. ‘I wonder is that more mothballs?’ she thought, stooping down to feel it with her hand. But instead of feeling the hard, smooth wood of the floor of the wardrobe, she felt something soft and powdery and extremely cold. ‘This is very queer,’ she said, and went on a step or two further.” Who’s Lucy?’ Tom looks down at Will. The nurse is ready with her needle. She waits until Will looks up at him.
‘She’s a girl. She’s been sent away with her brothers and her sister to a big house in the country because of the war.’ He flinches slightly and I see Louis squeeze his hand.
‘Bit like us, then,’ I say. Will nods. His bottom lip trembles slightly, but the nurse is working fast and soon the needle is out, and within seconds she’s labelling up his sample and putting it with the others.
‘Lucy’s the youngest,’ Will says and sniffs. Tom gives him the book back and he stares at it while Louis’ test is done. He’s still shaking, though. I think about how casually I’ve walked into every six-monthly blood test I ever had at school. It wouldn’t have been like that for Will. Five months of freedom, then one month of building dread.
The nurse packs her kit away and goes to leave. She pauses at the door and turns back.
‘It’s a good book,’ she says softly. ‘My great-grandma read it to me when I was little.’ And then she’s gone, leaving us all staring after her, mouths slightly open. The nurses never speak to us like that. Never.
‘I think he’s getting better, you know,’ Clara says as Georgie eats the last of the slightly squashed and paper-fluffy worms I dug up this afternoon. We haven’t gone over the wall tonight. The island is coated with a blanket of thick, freezing mist and although it would have been fun to explore in it, we want to spend time with the bird. His box sits on top of the blankets we’ve pulled from our beds to keep us warm, half on one of my legs and half on one of hers.
‘That’s it, I’m afraid,’ she says as the small beak opens and chirps for more. She looks up at me. ‘He definitely prefers the worms to the bread.’
I touch his small, warm head. His feathers are soft under my fingers and he doesn’t shiver or shake like he did when we first tucked him into the box. My hooded sweatshirt is still wrapped around him but he’s not afraid of us any more. His dark eyes dart from Clara to me and back again, and when he realises that the food really is all gone he settles down in the warmth of his bed. We’ve cleaned his wing again with some warm water and soap to get rid of the weird pus coming from the gash and he didn’t even try to wriggle free. I think he’s becoming tame – to us, at least. He looks happy enough and he’s eating, so maybe Clara’s right. Maybe he is getting better. That gives me a warm glow. Another crack in the defences I’ve worked so hard to build since I arrived at the house. I’m becoming ‘me’ again. I want to fight it. I
should
fight it, but here in the night with Clara I can’t stop myself.
‘I wish we could ask the nurses for some cream or something to put on his cut,’ Clara says. We’ve searched the house for a medical kit but couldn’t find one. The only thing we came up with were some blue plasters in the kitchen.
‘You know we can’t.’ I touch the soft head again.
‘Did you have a pet at home?’ she asks.
‘No.’
We’ve stacked our pillows behind us to make a kind of sofa on the floor but I can still feel the cold seeping through. I pull the blankets up a bit and Clara leans against me. ‘My mum was allergic to animal fur,’ I finish. ‘You?’
‘God, no. A pet? Making a mess? In the house?’ Her voice has changed into something sharp and affected – an impersonation of her mother. ‘That would be impossible. Muddy paw prints and fur everywhere.’ She laughs. ‘Which I could understand a bit more if it had been my mother doing the cleaning.’ Listening to her, I wish I could hate my mum. It would make all of this easier. All I can think of is the stuff I never said to her. The
good
stuff.
‘Well, we’ve got a pet now,’ I say. As if agreeing, Georgie ruffles the feathers on his good side.
‘I don’t want him to be a pet. I want him to get better and fly away. We’ll nurse him better.’
‘I wonder why she spoke to us. They never speak to us.’ Her words have made me think of the nurse again. Until today the nurses have just been ‘the nurses’. Now there’s one who’s a real person. After the blood tests, Will read his book right up until lights-out, Louis, curious, sometimes looking over his shoulder. I think Louis was reading the pages in seconds whereas it felt like an age before we heard the rustle of paper from Will. It isn’t a big book but I suspect this is more reading than Will probably ever did
before
. Now he’s not just reading it because Eleanor liked it, he’s reading it because of the nurse, too. The book is the link to that moment. Who’d ever have thought a few words from an adult could make such a difference?
‘I suppose she feels sorry for us.’ Clara’s voice is soft and for the first time she sounds reflective about our situation. ‘It must be strange for them, too. I wonder how they’re chosen?’
‘I always presumed they were just skilled psychopaths. You know, no feelings.’
She giggles. ‘Maybe Matron is. And the ones upstairs in the sanatorium. I wonder if they ever party? The nurses and the teachers getting it on. It would be like role-play heaven, I guess.’ She laughs again. ‘Maybe they play “you wear my outfit and I’ll wear yours” and then get dirty.’
I feel suddenly hot and uncomfortable. Clara’s a girl. They’re not supposed to talk about stuff like that, the stuff you see on the Internet. The idea that Clara might ever have watched porn makes me squirm.
‘You’ll have to point her out to me.’
‘Who?’
‘The nurse, dummy.’
‘Oh, yeah.’ I wonder how I’m supposed to do this. We never speak during the daytime. ‘If I see her. Anyway, you’re always with Jake.’ The words have blurted out of nowhere, my brain still fried with images of Clara and porn. Girls don’t think about sex. Not like boys do.
‘You’re always asleep. You should sleep less. I’m sure they put something in our drinks or food to keep us calm, but that doesn’t mean you should sleep the whole time. You’re worse than a stoner.’
I don’t know how she doesn’t sleep
more
after being awake for most of the night. She must only get three hours tops by the time we go to bed.
‘Anyway,’ she continues, ‘it’s safer that way.’
‘Safer?’
‘I don’t want people to notice. And if we talk to each other too much we’ll end up letting something slip. I don’t want them to start force-feeding me their “vitamins”.’
She’s got a point. It would be bad if the others picked up on something – worse if it was the nurses. Perhaps only one has ever spoken, but they all listen. And the one who talked to us is the one I’m the most suspicious of. Why would she want to be nice? What was she trying to achieve? I put her out of my head.
‘True. But Jake’s such a cock.’
‘No, he’s not.’
‘Maybe not with you, but that’s only ’cause he fancies you.’ The last bit comes out in some awful sing-song voice that makes me cringe. I wish I could shut up. ‘Before you got here he was just a cock. Trying to rule the place.’
‘He’s all right,’ she says. ‘I think he’s had a shit life. Even before this.’
I think of her loveless parents. ‘So did you.’
‘Different shit. Scarier shit.’
‘Maybe.’ I wonder how different this house is from reform school. Jake must have been young when he went, maybe Louis’ age. He wouldn’t have been top dog there.