Sarah Hall: The Carhullan Army

At night I would examine my feet, check that the bubbling mass of blisters was not infected, and each morning I would place the swabs of gauze we had been given between my toes. There were raw galls on my shoulders and lower back from the rubbing of the bergen straps. By the end of the three weeks I was carrying half my own weight, and I had begun to realise what a matchless device the human body was.

On the morning of the final march we gathered in the courtyard and waited for instruction as usual. I was barely awake and exhausted from the previous marches. Jackie came out, dressed in a military coat, and greeted us. ‘Long drag today,’ she said. ‘It’s an ordeal and it’s meant to be, so make sure you pace yourselves. I don’t want to have to bury any of you. Or feed you to the dogs.’ There was nervous laughter. She jerked her head to the side. ‘Now, don’t thank me, ladies, but I’ve a special bonus for you. Come this way.’

We followed her to one of the stone bothies. I had not been into it before. It was always padlocked and bolted. She took a key from the pocket of her fatigues and turned it in the lock; the hasp sprang back slickly and she pulled open the latches. She turned on the light. Before us there were stacks of stencilled metal boxes. Jackie stepped forward, hefted one down, and opened it. Inside, as I had known there would be, were the rifles. She handed one to each woman, and with it an ammunition pouch filled with heavy brass fobs. When it came to my turn, she opened another case, lifted out my father’s gun and smiled. I looked at the bad side of her face, the inert cleft running from her mouth to her ear. Then I took the rifle from her. It had been scoured of rust and repaired, and I knew it was still accurate enough to snipe deer.

There were no straps attached to any of the weapons. We were to carry them at all times, Jackie told us. Anyone seen putting their gun down en route would run the course again tomorrow. And again the day after if they dropped it. ‘And be warned, I’ll be coming along shortly to keep you company,’ she said. ‘Like the red light of morning.’

I set out, my bag full, the rifle in one hand, and the weighted pouch in the other. As the sun was rising Jackie cantered past on one of the fell ponies. ‘Who’s sticky now, Sister?’ she called down to me, and laughed.

We had been given twenty-four hours to cover forty miles. We would make six circuits of the High Street range and we would walk through the night in darkness, tracking our way along the escarpment. It was the same distance as my journey from Rith to Carhullan. I had been told by the patrol then that it was impossible for me to have walked it all, and they had been right. This time I would prove them wrong.

*

There was no mutiny at Carhullan. If Jackie had anticipated there might be, and had moved her original unit into the house to protect herself, she need not have worried. There was no one to challenge her. And, under whatever law there was now, the place was hers. No one else could have held it together as she did. I was surprised so many of the women decided to go along with her plan. Deep down I had thought myself unusual, perhaps maligned with some kind of unnatural antagonism or need for leadership, for wanting to act in a way I had been programmed to think was wrong. But eighteen in all came forward. The older women in the colony were largely exempt. Jackie needed Ruth and Lorry and an experienced core of others in their original capacities. The farm had to keep ticking over, even if it was to be less a farm than a support system for the soldiers within.

A small group refused to train. Jackie respected their wishes as she had said she would, and she promised that when the time came she would escort them to one of the Pennine towns and see to it that they were set up, given a section number, and camouflaged from the Authority. Shruti was among them. We still spoke and often sat beside one another on the bench for meals, but we no longer met up alone, no longer sought each other out as we once had. Since the night of Jackie’s announcement we had not slept together, and though I was still attracted to her I knew it was for the best. I did not tell her what I was doing with the unit, and she did not ask. Our company seemed defined by a gentle sadness now, as if we had never really had the opportunity to fall out of love, and everything begun had been curtailed instead of aborted.

I might have walked away completely, avoided her around the farm, to make it all easier, for myself at least, attempting to convert the relationship into a mistake in my head. But she made a point of maintaining a bond. She offered to wash my clothes with hers, left flowers on the crate next to my bunk. There was more grace in her than I could have managed, and without hers I would have found none. It brought a gentle ache to my chest to have her hug me at the end of a dinner shift and then walk away to her bed, or rest a hand on my shoulder and ask if I was faring OK when she saw my cuts and bruises, my newly shaved head.

We could have made passes at each other and it would have ended with our limbs tangled again, our bodies spilling outwards, wet and arching. And if she had come to me with that in mind I would not have stopped it or pushed her away, though I knew Jackie would disapprove. Shruti held back, as I did. Instead, she offered me a quiet, spiritual friendship.

I returned from training one morning to find a small velvet bag on the bed. My fingers were staved with the cold and filthy, two of the nails were black, and I struggled to draw back the slender cord pinching the bag closed. I tipped its contents into my palm. It was an Edwardian necklace with green, white, and violet stones. I knew it had been Veronique’s, and it had come into Shruti’s possession after her death, when all her belongings had been shared out. In the bag, on a tiny scrap of paper, she had written a note. The day will come. Be strong . I did not know what to say when I saw her that evening, and so I said nothing, just smiled at her across the kitchen, and then went into the parlour room where Corky, Megan, and the others were drinking.

I tried not to think about the times we had been together. But I know I felt more for her after we had separated than in the weeks of our fervour and discovery. She was a revelation to me. And if it had not been for the teachings of Jackie Nixon, hers would have been the most profound lessons of my time at the farm.

Carhullan was not perfect. If it had once been close to it, running to a high level of courtesy and enlightenment, a society that celebrated female strength and tolerance, the balance had now tipped back. There were arguments between those in the unit and those still running the farm, who thought they now carried an unfair burden of work, that they were at the bottom of the hierarchy. Some in the other group continued to try to talk Jackie down from her position during the evening meetings, and she began to tire of it.

Chloe remained outspoken on the subject. ‘How do we know if what you say is true, Jackie?’ she would ask. ‘Where’s the proof of it, other than your word? I’ve seen no Authority monitors here yet. Has anyone else? You’re just hell-bent on this conflict. And you’re dragging everyone else along with you.’ Then she would turn on the room. ‘Why don’t you all wake up and see what she’s doing! Do you really think she can sneak little Stella back into town without anyone noticing?’ There was a zealousness to her when she talked, a desperation. Often she would work herself into a frenzy and storm out of the room, go looking for her husband in the stables. Jackie would close the door softly behind her.

The gatherings were finally suspended. I knew we were as guilty of failure and disunity as any other human society. I knew we were as defective.