Sarah Hall - The Carhullan Army

We unloaded the peat bricks, stacked them in a lean-to, and went inside the largest of the cottages. The boys and the old man remained outside and I heard the dog barking from a distance, as if they were leaving the settlement.

It was more basic inside than the farmhouse: a single room, with a table and chairs, a small sooty fireplace under a hood, and two ladders on opposite walls leading up to alcoves where there were flat beds. There was no electricity and only two slit windows. The low structure was full of elongated shadows. Red cinders glowed in the fire’s cradle. The place smelled of clay, charcoal, and animal fat, and there was a musky odour too that I couldn’t place, something mushroomy and decayed, like a forest’s interior. Underfoot it was soft. There were no boards. The women at the farm often decorated rustically, with flowers and green cuttings, bowls of fruit, or they made spirals with pebbles on the mantels and window seats in the parlour. But here there was little in the way of ornament. It was utilitarian and sullen.

There was an awkward pause and one of the men gave an airy bronchial cough. Then Calum seemed to liven up. He filled a metal kettle from a barrel of water and hung it on a curved rod over the fire, asking who wanted tea and pulling off his jumper. As he raised it over his head I saw his stomach, hairless and deeply corniced by his ribcage. Underneath, his T-shirt was faded and torn and there were pale yellow stains under his arms. No one answered him. There was another silence before Martyn and Chloe stood up and walked towards the door of the croft. The other women exchanged glances. ‘Oh come on. No need for niceties,’ Chloe called back. ‘We’re going to have to leave in a few minutes or it’ll be dark.’ The two of them disappeared and I heard a few softly spoken words, laughter, then the door of one of the other cottages opened and closed.

Calum stood looking at me from the fireplace. His hair was ruffed up on the back of his head where he had lifted his jumper over it. The bone surrounding his eye sockets was too prominent and his face was long. He had raw, equine features. I held his gaze for a few moments, then looked away. Somebody made a joke about conjugal visits and the others in the group began to move around the room, seeking each other out and pairing off. It was not a casual procedure but there seemed to be little discussion or etiquette. Katrina and another woman headed out of the croft cottage with men, leaving Shruti, Lillian and me with Calum and Dominic. I could still feel Calum’s eyes on me, resting expectantly, curiously. I felt stupid not to have known what was going to occur. The back of my neck tingled and I felt a flush of heat. I wanted to stand up and leave, but I knew I could not.

The kettle began to shrill from the fireplace and steam rattled its lid. Its pitch carried on for a minute, and then Shruti stood and walked round Calum, picked up a cloth from the table, and removed it from the iron hook. She took it to a dusty sideboard and poured water into two cups and brought one to me. I took it from her, grateful for the gesture and the calm surrounding her. Lillian nodded and smiled. ‘Well, it looks like I got the best end of the deal this time. Lucky me.’ She walked to one of the ladders and began to climb up. The two remaining men followed after her.

‘Want to drink this outside then?’ Shruti offered. I nodded and we made our way to the door. ‘I can’t really believe it,’ I said to her quietly. ‘Yes you can,’ she replied. She latched the door closed and we sat on a low crop of wall beside the crofts. I could see the boys and the dog further down in the valley, bending over in the furrows of a ploughed parcel of land. The elder was pulling a large container towards the edge of the field. ‘What are they doing?’ I asked, more for something to say than out of genuine interest. ‘Turnips,’ she replied. ‘For the sheep. And for us.’

She nudged me. ‘Look. Chloe and Martyn are married,’ she said. ‘They’re pretty tight about it. He doesn’t sleep with anyone else. Nothing wrong with screwing your husband, is there?’ I sipped at the hot water. It tasted of iron. ‘No. Of course not. Why doesn’t she live down here with him though?’ Shruti smiled again and shrugged. ‘I don’t know. That’s between them. Just something they decided, I suppose. That’s how they work it. Maybe he’s not her main priority. They see enough of each other to get by. And, well, Martyn is a good guy. There have been blokes who set up a tent outside the farm, and then a week later they were gone. Not exactly what you’d call loyal or flexible. But I suppose it’s understandable. Would you stay?’

I leaned back against the croft wall. It was uneven and uncomfortable, digging into my spine in several places. ‘No,’ I replied. ‘So what about Calum and the others?’ Shruti sighed. ‘A couple of them came here with women, I think, and then stayed on and adjusted. Calum didn’t. I don’t know what brought him exactly, avoidance of the real world perhaps, but he’s been here a long time. Longer than me. He feels useful.’ She took hold of my arm. ‘Look, they don’t just stay on for the reason you’re thinking, like our little harem. It isn’t like that at all. They don’t want to be in town any more than we do. They farm as well and we help them out because we can. Maybe there were romantic ambitions to start with, but not any more.’ She paused. Her dark eyes looked almost apologetic. ‘It’s strange maybe. But up here it’s difficult. You think you might be programmed a certain way but you soon find out you aren’t. You just make do. And yeah, of course Calum likes it. I would too.’

She let go of my arm. We were quiet for a moment and I could hear muffled noises coming from the croft opposite. I did not know which of the women had gone into that building, but her voice was high and abandoned. Then I heard the man climaxing. The situation was still uncomfortable, but my body responded and I felt a bloom of heat between my legs. I pictured the occupants together, two faceless forms, moving steadily against each other, moving in a local and exaggerated way. I saw the man pulling out, hard and glistening, and imagined the soft slippery space in her closing again.

A sensation of breathlessness came over me. I had not felt anything like passion for months. Since the incident in the cruiser I had not wanted to. If Andrew had recognised the trauma in me he did not broach it. He left me to myself. We had not slept together for months and if he had made arrangements with anyone else I had neither known about it nor cared. The women at Carhullan knew more about me than he did. Maybe it was the clear air, the days of physical exertion, or the sense of freedom and exchange between the residents, but here I suddenly felt ready for this part of myself to be opened again.

Shruti sat quietly, not saying anything, staring straight ahead. She was resting cross-legged on the wall, holding the chipped cup in her hand. I glanced over. Her dark hair was tucked in loose curls behind her ears. The patch of flesh on her neck looked shiny and faintly raised in the outside light. She was slight, fine-boned, but curved. If she had not been there with me I might have walked away, alone, back across the pass to the farm, leaving the women to their pleasures. But she was next to me. There was a peaceful containment to her, as always. I wondered what she was thinking, whether she was moved too.

Something about the tiny hamlet seemed rationally sordid, oppressive, and melancholy. It was unlike anywhere I had known. And I did not understand what had stirred in me, or why the proximity of others coupling had excited me in this environment. All I could think of was the movement of those within, the cries I had heard. I was no different from them.