Sarah Hall - The Carhullan Army

There was another pause. ‘When was this?’ ‘Today,’ I replied. There was a snort. The voice next to me had remained level, but now a note of annoyance entered it. ‘Almost forty miles? No, you didn’t.’ I realised the inaccuracy of what I had said, and corrected myself. ‘There was a man who gave me a lift part of the way. He said he worked at the reservoir. I got out at Rosgill.’ Another pause. My head was lowered back down. No more questions were asked.

For a long time it was quiet. Then a dry whistle sounded across the fell. I could hear my possessions being shaken one by one and stuffed back into the bag. I was still being held down but the grip on my scalp had relaxed. The hand lay flat there, and at one point I thought I felt fingers combing gently through my hair. Then I felt another set of hands patting me down, reaching underneath me, pressing my hips and ribs, my ankles. Pain started to arrive properly in my mouth, my knee, and along my collarbone. I tried to cast the shock and discomfort away and get a clear reading of the situation. It must be them, I thought. They had found me first, before I’d seen the farm.

I was disarmed. I hadn’t expected such an aggressive meeting and I wanted to explain myself, but all the things that passed through my mind were submissive and desperate, a reiteration of the position I was already in, so I did not speak. My shoulder was aching but I held as still as I could, was as compliant as I could be. They continued their search. I heard the small bag with my soap and shampoo inside being unzipped and investigated. There was a metallic rattle and the lid of the tin where I kept my few small personal items was popped off. Papers rustled.

For a time the women were so quiet it was as is they had disappeared, as if I were being held down by some supernatural force. The wind hissed through the grass. Then I heard dull footsteps coming towards where I lay. I could see a pair of broken leather boots. Grey tape had been bound round the toe and sole of one of them and it looked like a dog’s muzzle. The hand on my skull was taken away. I twisted my head upwards as best I could and strained to see. The figure standing above was holding out a piece of paper to whoever was squatting over me. ‘Jacks,’ she said. ‘Ages ago.’ There was another long pause. From the corner of my eye I saw a hand gesture being made. Then I was released.

Slowly I knelt and ran the back of my arm across my face, wiping away the filth. The bones to the left of my collar felt cracked and pushed out of place, but I tried to block out the sensation and stop my eyes from watering. ‘Come on. Get up on your feet.’ It was the woman who had gone through my things that spoke. Her tone was as even as it had been throughout, but the voice seemed less taut now, less officious. I stood, keeping my weight on the knee I had not jarred, and as I looked at her I knew for certain she was one of Carhullan’s residents. She was about my height. She was my size, and my sex, but she looked almost alien. Her face was brown and lined, and the eyes in it were pale green, careful but indifferent. On top of her head the hair was short, it looked oily and separated, like an otter’s pelt. At the back it was longer; she wore it pulled away and tied at her neck.

She had on rough black trousers made of canvas or denim, a long thermal with holes in the sleeves and a padded body vest, the kind the old walking shops used to sell. Under her clothes she looked compact and athletic. The flesh between her bones was spare and seemed whittled back, dug out, but not unhealthily so. She was honed. There was a quality about her that seemed so vital and distinguished, so memorable, that I felt I might be gazing at someone I had met before, or had seen on the news a decade ago. More than anything, she appeared native.

In her hand she held the straps of my rucksack. ‘It’ll be better if you carry this in,’ she said. ‘Are you going to be able? You all right after that?’ I nodded and she passed me the bag. She held it out with a straight arm as if it weighed nothing but when I took it from her it felt as if it had doubled in weight since the walk. I had a ridiculous thought that perhaps she had loaded stones from the moor into it along with my possessions. In her other hand she still held the tin box. Grimacing, I slung the bag onto my back again.

I turned round. The other woman was much younger, no more than a girl, sixteen at most. She looked too slight to have held me down, though her face registered no such concern. Her head was shaved, with only a few days’ worth of red bristle on her scalp. There was a primitive blue tattoo on the raised skull around her ear. A thin piece of leather was wound several times around her neck. Her clothes were equally worn and practical, but they looked like burlap or hemp, homemade. She was as aloof as the other woman.

I glanced down and saw she had the rifle loosely trained on me. She held it low on her hip, casually, cradling the stock. I had not heard her load it, or test the mechanism, though I guessed she might have. She was obviously confident with its handling and unimpressed by what she was holding. She seemed to be waiting for direction of some kind. I looked back at her elder, who unzipped the body warmer, put my tin box inside and zipped it back up. ‘Fifty — fifty who spooked the deer,’ she said, ‘but you were downwind, so I’ll bet it was us.’ She said this slowly and with deliberation, as if making a basic point, or speaking to a young child. Her lips were rolled inwards. It was an expression that could have been a smile, or it could have signified derision. Behind her a third girl was running back across the moorland. As she approached she nodded to the otter-haired woman and then ran past. ‘Right. Away in then,’ the woman said to me. ‘You can tell us your name if you like, but you might as well save it for Jackie. She’ll be the one you have to ask it back from anyway.’ I felt myself being nudged forward by the gun barrel.

Nothing more was said as we walked. I fell slightly behind the two of them. The pace of my escorts looked leisurely but it was brisker than I could manage. I tried to keep up, but the weight on my back made me slow and clumsy; my knee was swelling and stiffening, and I stumbled over the uneven ground. From time to time they adjusted their stride, falling back a few paces, not enough to allow me to catch up properly, but I could see they were keeping me in their range. Their hostility had lessened, but they were making no moves to be friendly, to find out anything about me, nor were they inviting me to ask about them. A sense of disappointment began to creep through me.

It was not the reception I’d played out in my mind so many times when thinking about Carhullan. I’d seen myself striding up to the farm, looking fit and fierce, being welcomed, not with awe or amazement, but with quiet admiration by the girls working outside. I’d imagined an immediate sense of unity, the way it had felt to form a group of new friends at school, with everyone suddenly aware of the collaboration and trust involved. And there would be Jackie and Veronique, standing at the great oak doorway, just like they had in the photograph, as if that’s where they had always stood, and would always stand.

But fifteen years was a long time to be left alone in the wilds. And in that time so much had passed. There had been terrible events, and responses that were almost as extreme. Though I had lived in it I often barely recognised the residual world. I wondered what they knew of this. How must it have been for them, detached and unaided as they were? Perhaps aware of the changes going on. Perhaps oblivious to them. As we walked I began to realise that I had come to a place now as foreign and unknown as anywhere overseas, as anywhere of another age. I wanted to press them for information, ask questions, and tell them about conditions in the towns. I wanted to try to negotiate, or ingratiate myself. But I didn’t. Suddenly I was too tired, too weary almost to move.