Cuttlefish (2 page)

O
n the day it had all started, Clara had not wanted to leave school. It was not that St. Margaret's School for the Children of Officers and Gentlemen in Fermoy, Cork, Ireland, was a place that she loved. She detested every inch of it, from the courtyard with its limp Union Jack, surrounded by three stories of clattering corridors and classrooms, to the coal cellar that Ellen—helped by the three terrors—had pushed her into last week. Clara knew that she should keep quiet, keep her head down…but she wasn't good at that. And the girls on the top of the pile were bigger than her, better at sports, popular with boys and with the teachers…but stupid, too.

Well, the library—with its tall stacks of slightly musty leather-bound books—mostly fifty years old, and, often as not, from parts of the Empire that had vanished beneath the waves in the Big Melt—was the all right part of the school. It had books and protection, in the shape of a librarian on duty. Besides, going in there was something the popular girls wouldn't be caught dead doing. So Clara had been lurking in between the stacks. She'd been looking at a book on the Australian Colonies, complete with pictures of funny-looking black men with painted throwing sticks and very few clothes.

No decent Englishman would be seen like that! Not even at New Brighton! The other girls would at least pretend to be shocked. That, and the angry expression on the man's face, made Clara curious enough to start reading. She'd read all the fiction in the place years ago, and besides, it was about a place that was a long way away, a place where she was unlikely to meet other St. Margaret's girls and be jeered at or, worse, sniffed at and turned away from. Books like this were good for dreams. She'd like to go there.…It would be far enough away from home so she would not have to explain to her mother that she had got a B for chemistry in the latest set of tests. It didn't matter that she'd got 98% for mathematics, no.

She looked at the leather cover:
Queensland, the Dominion of Australia. Its People and the Quaint Customs of the Native Inhabitants
. A place on the other side of the world…it would be far away from anyone who knew that her father was in prison. Clara wasn't sure if they regarded that as any better than her mother being divorced, but she knew that when you added the two together it made her life in Fermoy, and at St. Margaret's, barely worth living.

Then, to her utter horror, she'd heard her mother's voice. “Is my daughter Clara here?”

Did she
have
to come here?

“Yes, Dr. Calland.” The librarian sniffed. “I believe Miss Calland is in the geography section.” Disapproval was written clearly in the librarian's tone. Parents, even the daughters of an original founding lady-governor, were not welcome on the school grounds. They should hand over their child at the gate, and their money at the front office, and that was it. A divorced mother, wandering around unaccompanied, would be as welcome at St. Margaret's as leprosy.

What was her mother doing here? Clara wondered, caught between irritation and sudden fear. Something must be wrong. She should be at work, in her laboratory at Imperial Chemicals and Dyes.

Clara's mother was tall, elegant, and all the other things Clara had decided she wasn't ever going to grow up to be: womanly, and a research chemist. Her mother's hair was always so precisely pinned up, especially when she went out…but it definitely was not in perfect order right now. And she was very pale. The moment her mother stepped around the stack, Clara knew that something was very wrong.

The fact that she put her finger to her lips was also somewhat of a clue. “Ah, Clara,” said her mother, a little too loudly and cheerfully, quite unlike herself. “You must come with me right now. I have a motoring car waiting out front.”

A car? Almost no one had one of those. The trams ran well and to time. Fuel for motoring cars was ruinously expensive too. Well, in the British Empire. It was said that in America even a lot of ordinary people owned cars. The idea of going in one was rather exciting. “Yes, Mother,” she said, doing her best to sound like a good St. Margaret's girl. “I must just take out my library books and collect my satchel.”

“You can do that tomorrow, Clara. I am going to Belfast now, and I need to make certain arrangements,” her mother said, firmly, while shaking her head and beckoning, a pleading expression on her face.

Clara got the message. She still wasn't sure what it meant. But she was perfectly happy to leave her satchel, and the chemistry test inside it—which had to be signed by her mother—behind. The library books were a bit more of a wrench. She put the book back in its place on the shelf and took her mother's outstretched hand.

Really. Holding hands. As if she were a little girl or something. But the look on her mother's face made her take it. Mother's hand was cold and damp.

Dr. Calland smiled politely at the sour-faced librarian, and led her out. Down the corridor. And then…away from the front gate.

“It's the other way,” said Clara.

Her mother shook her head. “I'll explain when I have a chance. Come with me, Clara. Just come along without arguing, just this once, please.”

That had been enough to get Clara to follow her into the junior teachers' common room. It was empty right now. They were all away taking luncheon at the dining hall.

On the far side of the room was a little fire escape door next to the class racks. Clara's mother reached over the top of the cast iron fretwork on the edge of the rack of workbooks waiting to be marked. She felt about…and took down a key. She breathed a sigh of relief. “I was worried someone might have dusted and found it. Oh well. It's only been sixteen years.”

She fitted the key into the lock of a door marked F
IRE
E
SCAPE
, D
O
N
OT
L
OCK
. Clara noticed that her mother's hands were trembling slightly. The little door creaked open. “They removed the key of the fire escape door because the headmistress found out that we'd been using it to sneak in when we were late for chapel and assembly,” said her mother, with almost a hint of a smile. “I had had two spare keys cut, because I knew someone was bound to tumble to our using it. It'll serve them right if the place catches fire and they all roast.”

Clara knew that her mother had taught here at St. Margaret's, back while she'd been a student. The idea of her being late for anything, or even doing something as…well, as underhand as that was quite strange, though. Parents didn't, did they? At least, not her mother. She was always so…proper.

They went through the doorway and out onto the landing, and her mother carefully locked the door behind them. That was more like her mother, than sneaking in late for assembly! The steep, rusty steel fire escape led down the outside of the old brick back wall facing the camogie fields, with the canal path beyond them.

“It's to be hoped that they keep watching the gate. I told them it could take a little time to get you out of there,” said Clara's mother. “Here.” She dug into her handbag and pulled out a pair of kerchiefs. Handed one to Clara. “Put one over your hair,” she said hastily, shaking the other out. “We're too obvious with our blonde heads.”

Clara was shocked. “We'll look like gypsies, Mother!” Being blonde in Ireland announced that you were possibly English or German. No one would hide that! Otherwise you might be thought to be merely Irish.

“Good. They're not looking for gypsies,” her mother answered, tying the kerchief in place. “I wish I'd thought of shawls.”

They made their way down the narrow stair and along the weedy edge of the third-team camogie field. There was a gap in the privet hedge at the far end of the field that girls who wanted to avoid camogie practice used to slip away through.

Clara knew it well.

It appeared that her mother must have known it too. It had proved to be quite a day for ruining the ideas she'd had about her parent.

They were squeezing through the gap when someone yelled behind them. It didn't sound like the King's English. “They're onto us,” said Mother, pushing her forward. Clara had been trying to avoid ripping her school skirt, up to that point. It was obvious that her mother, who normally would have had words with her about tears or stains, didn't care right now.

There was a coal barge heading away from the Blackwater toward Factory Town, with its smokestack dribbling dirty smoke from the cheap brown coal.

“Thank heavens,” said her mother. “Run Clara. Jump onto her. Tell Padraig to hide you. I'll try and head them off. I'll find you later.”

“But—”

“Just go!” Clara saw, to her horror, that her mother, a lifelong pacifist, was taking a gun out of her purse.

Clara recognised it. It was her father's. She remembered the fight between her parents—because he'd dared to bring such a thing into the house—far too well to ever forget it. But surely he'd…he'd had it with him when he'd been arrested?

Mother's hands were shaking. “Go, Clara. Please!”

Biting her lip, Clara backed away. But she did not run. She wasn't sure why she didn't. Her mother had obviously gone mad, and was aiming the gun back through the scraggly privet. There was a bang. Her mother turned—even whiter in the face than before. “I thought I told you to run. Go.
Now
!”

“Come with me. Please. Please!”

Then there was the sound of several shots from back near the school, and a sudden crack of branches and a scattering of leaves.

And then a shrill whistle sounded, and someone shouted, “Stand! In the name of the King. Hold your fire!”

More shots were fired in answer to that, as her mother snatched her hand. “Hopefully they'll keep each other busy. Let's run. Next time please do what I tell you, Clara. This is not the time or place to argue.”

They ran. The unfamiliar barge was already picking up speed, running barely a yard off the canal margin. A black-faced bargee beckoned furiously, and they jumped aboard. “Get down among the coal, like. Be quick about it,” he said hastily. “Mad girl. Shooting! There be trouble about this.”

Following her mother's lead, Clara burrowed down into the small lumps of coal, trying to dig her way into it.

It was black, dirty coal, and then the bargee took a shovel and poured it over them. And then more. And more. He was not that gentle about it. “Black your face,” said the mother who normally told her to wash it.

The canal was a busy place, with barges pushing along both ways, as they slowly moved further from the school. “Squirm down as much as you can. And then keep still,” hissed her mother.

The thumping of the engine's pistons slowed. “Face down. Keep dead still,” said the bargee quietly.

Clara heard an angry English-accented voice, panting. “Why didn't you stop immediately?”

“Well, I'd like to have stopped immediately for you, sorr,” said the bargee, in a slow drawl, his accent so thick as to make him hard to understand. “But t'irty-foive tons of coal keeps moving for a while, like. So, it's sorry that I am. But a barge isn't like your motor-bicycle, Lieutenant. Can't start fast, can't stop fast. Can't do anything fast.”

“Pah. Mind your cheek, you Irish scum,” said the young officer, “or I'll have you locked up for disrespecting an officer. Now, I'm to search your vessel for a woman and a young girl.”

“Be my guest, sorr,” said the bargee. “No one in my cabin, as you can see, eh? T'eyre not here, unless t'ey're lying on my coal. But look for yerself, sorr. Maybe t'ey're buried in it. Here's a shovel if you'd like to dig t'rough it all.”

There was the meaty sound of a slap. “I warned you not to give me any more of your lip. I'll take you with me…”

“And what'll you do with t' barge, sorr? Nowt to tie her to here. She'll drift. Likely to block the canal. Colonel'll have t'at shiny pip off of your shoulder for t'at, I'm t'inking,” said the bargee, calmly.

There was a pause. An exasperated sigh. “Get on your way, then.”

“Why t'ank you, sorr,” said the bargee with mocking politeness. “I'll be doing t'at if you'd get off of my barge, like.”

A few moments later the big pistons began clanking again and the vessel shuddered and pushed on through the water.

“Stay down,” said the bargee quietly. So they did. The journey seemed endless.

“We're coming up to Mag's crib. Get yourselves off. And good luck,” said the bargee.

They scrambled up out of the coal and leapt out onto the muddy bank, which was here overhung by willow trees. There was a half-tumbled-down thatched cottage just beyond the trees, and her mother, as coal-black now as the angry-looking man from Queensland in the book had been, led them through the tangle of mallows and bramble towards it.

Someone must have been watching, because the door opened before they got to it. “Get inside wit' you,” said the old woman in the doorway, hastily, peering around for any watchers. They scrambled in and she closed the door and bolted it behind them. There was not much light inside, with what little there was coming from a fire and two very small deep-inset windows, and it was hard to see much. But the poverty was obvious.