The divide, p.25
The Divide, page 25
As for managing with very little, Stef and Jasmine are top experts. They claimed they could do a thousand things with a turnip and they’re not far off proving that true. They have great plans – well, we all do – of making this place work, of building extensions to take in more people who need a refuge, of expanding the vegetable garden to plant crops on a grander scale. We have become very skilled with duvet construction. The wonderful, brave people who helped us make this derelict place habitable brought us a clutch of young chickens and a massive sack of feed, and the children have been given the task of collecting feathers and down. It takes a lot to make a duvet, but we are getting there. Those chickens have a more comfortable life than we do. None of us knew anything about how to keep them happy, so they are being ridiculously pampered.
I’m under no illusions. One serious illness or accident that needs urgent hospital treatment, or one too nosy local farmer who follows a stray sheep over the hills and does not like the look of outsiders, and our new life will collapse around us like the fragile house of cards it is.
Last summer has been the longest summer of my life in every way. There is no going back. I’ll never seen Oxford again, at least not for ages. There is no going back to the person I was. I have learnt things I might never have wanted to learn – how trust can turn on you, how little bubbles of security can burst in an instant, how the sweetness of innocence or ignorance, once soured, is sour forever.
I turn to look through the window, across to the range of white-topped hills – the Grampians. Do we feel safe? Yes, in the main. Are we really safe? No. Government drones have been seen scouting these hills occasionally. And the locals say the Subgarda would not hesitate to storm across the border to snatch away a family for imprisonment or ‘vanishing’.
We all had our adventures on the way here. Gran called them adventures, at any rate; most of the rest of us used words more like terror, nightmare. Her route up here involved a manner she had been joking about for ages, except in her head it was no joke, we realised. She set off a day before her scheduled ‘no longer at this address’ date, leaving a note for Mum and Dad saying something like, I’ve taken the bus, see you there. And she did. Gran was old enough that she still had a bus pass for free travel. The government had not dared to take them away from the over-eighties. It only covered local buses, but local buses often went a lot further than most people would realise. She must have had some horrible moments trying to find public toilets or waiting in dark corners of grimy bus stations for the first driver of the morning to turn up, trying to sleep as her bus bumped along pot-holed country roads, living off sandwiches and probably desperate for a proper cup of tea.
We had agreed a meeting point by the bandstand in the park in that little town in County Perth. For me, it was a long waiting game. I’d hollowed out a dry nest of fallen leaves under some oaks and beeches. The scalding summer meant that many leaves had just given up the ghost, crumbled and dropped before even bothering to turn golden.
One late afternoon, as I made my usual half-hourly foray to the edge of the trees to look across to the bandstand – there she was. Unmistakable. Standing dishevelled yet defiant, patient in her unfailing optimism that things would be fine, that I would be there for her.
A massive, unexpected uprising on the south coast had been a godsend for the rest of us. Somebody stealing somebody else’s fish had escalated into a minor war, which the government feared would escalate into a major war. This concentrated all the troops and spare Garda down there, which meant we all had a better chance on the road.
Small cells of dissidents, like my Astronomy Club, helped us all through their networks – those fabulous networks that spread silently underground like the mycorrhizal fungi through which tree roots speak to each another. And these groups, I later heard, were buoyed up by the news permeating through them that Stefan, a legend now on both sides of the Divide, was a big influence with Anglian subversives and could help unite dissidents on both sides. That would be a first.
Each of us waited here, biting our nails, as the others arrived in one and twos. Suyin, Lucas and the girls had a lot of help from good people who had heard the story of Suyin being snatched from her family and the anguish they had gone through not knowing if they would ever see her again.
Mum and Dad went mainly legitimately. Deep down, Mum may have wondered if one day they would have to make such an escape. Anyway, somehow their plans fell into place very rapidly. They did the journey through Dad’s work; instead of going home after visiting a factory or a company headquarters that needed a perfumer, they simply moved further on, to the next town and the next – all with valid travel documents, Mum travelling as his assistant rather than his wife because a spouse is never considered necessary in work-related travel. And if a factory did not need a perfumer, Dad simply persuaded them that on that day they did.
As for me and Kris, our route was slow and sure and deliciously private. We came by canal. Not on one boat but many different ones. Some of them were rented out for holidays and just travelled a short distance – or so the government thought – others were owned by little local traders who shifted their goods on the quiet to avoid paying transport tax and were more than happy to have a couple of young lovers do the journey for them. It took a bit of organising – meeting up with possibly dodgy people in definitely dodgy pubs or cafés – but it turns out Kris and I are both good at that.
I look through the window towards the open door of the old shed we’ve turned into a workshop. He’s in there now, carving rose patterns on the head of the cot he has made for Jasmine’s baby. Turns out he’s good at that too.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all my family and friends for being so supportive. Special thanks also to my alpha readers, Linda King and Gill Shapton, and to the very efficient team at The Book Guild.
Vicki Lloyd, The Divide
