Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

“And you knew absolutely nothing of this?” snapped Antonia.

“Upon my honour, Miss Bocker, there were things that I had been told were coming in the offing, but nothing so immediate as this. It was only quite recently that I learnt about the Fête champêtre. I suspected that it should be the vehicle through which certain privileged residents of this valley — the Bashaws, as you call them — would receive their sanctioned release from this place, but I could not confirm it for myself until this moment, seeing here what Mrs. Pyegrave wrote on the card. Emigration is the Project’s way of rewarding its helpmates in Dingley Dell for their many years of service as insider agents.”

“Whither will they go?” asked Graham.

“I suspect that what awaits the members of your Petit-Parliament and their kinsmen and families is relocation to some secured and exotic place — perhaps an island in the South Seas, since the Project owns hundreds of acres of holiday property throughout the South Pacific. I would imagine that they’ll be spending the remainder of their days in compensatory tropical comfort.”

“And what of the rest of us once they go?” asked Antonia. “What are they to do with us?”

“I don’t know,” was all that Miss Wolf would say.

“May I guess?” asked Muntle. “Allow me to offer two possible contrasting outcomes, each dependent upon how the following questions be answered: what should happen to the administrators of the Tiadaghton Project once word of what they have perpetrated becomes known? If laws have been broken — both those of man and those of God — will our mysterious overlords be required to answer for them? Is there a price to be paid for what was done to us over all the years, and if so, will they attempt to avoid that cost by covering their tracks by any means? How these questions are answered should determine whether we shall simply be evicted, or whether we should be dealt with by some other more terminal means.”

“I believe there to be only one possible outcome,” said the Reverend Upwitch grimly. “For did we not hear Miss Wolf say that many who left the Dell were murdered to guarantee their permanent silence? I should think that our own lives are of equal negligible value to these filthy Outland assassins.”

“Consider as well the depravities to which the Bedlam inmates are daily subjected,” added Mr. Graham. “There is not a glimmer of humanity in such treatment of any of us, not within the Dell or without. Why should it be any different when the book is closed?”

“They will not — nay, cannot— permit the true story of Dingley Dell to be freely told,” I added. “The administrators of the Tiadaghton Project will have no choice but to still every voice that remains after the Bashaws have fled. There is only one solution, and we all know what it is.”

As each of the men in the room pondered the looming possibility of his own demise, the two women in our company repaired briefly to Miss Wolf ’s home to fetch an ice pail containing a certain canned beverage to be imbibed during the unveiling of the true and unvarnished history of Dingley Dell, courtesy of Miss Ruth Wolf, impromptu annalist of this nowforsaken valley. I was most eager to hear every detail that Ruth chose to offer, and was curious about the taste of the flavourful potable, which the teller had procured from her secret larder for our refreshment. The beverage was of Outlander origin. It was called Wegman’s Cola.

fter pouring the beverage from several cans upon mountains of ice within our tumblers we each took an appraising sip.

“I’ve never tasted anything quite like it,” said Upwitch, smacking his lips and holding the clear glass away from him to examine the umber colouring of its contents.

“Quite sweet,” said his companion Graham. “A little syrupy, but quite good.”

The attention of my scholastic and bibliophilic friend was now drawn to the discarded cans from which the liquid had been decanted. He picked one up and assayed its weight upon his palm. “What is this? It cannot be tin. It’s much too light.”

“It isn’t tin,” responded Miss Wolf. “It’s aluminum. Or alu min ium in the parlance of the Brits.”

Graham squeezed the can; it gave way, readily crumpling in the centre. “That’s quite impossible.”

“And why do you say that?”

“Because aluminium is more precious than gold or silver. Bars of it were, in fact, exhibited alongside the French crown jewels at the Exposition Universelle of 1855.”

“Yes, and Napoleon III reserved a set of aluminum dinner plates for his most favoured guests,” rejoined Miss Wolf.“I’m familiar with the illustrious history of this metal. Back in that day, Mr. Graham, it was prohibitively expensive to extract the metal from bauxite ore. But that has changed. Nowadays we turn aluminum into beverage cans and sell it by the roll for kitchen use in even the poorest of homes.”

“Remarkable!” Graham examined the crushed can in his hand as if it were some new species of miniature mammalian fauna that he could not wait to take home to dissect and give taxonomic name to.

I picked up a can myself and ran my inquisitive fingers along the contour of this sculpted element of nature, which I’d never before seen (for there was nothing within the Dell made of aluminium to my knowledge— not a single, blessed thing). It was as if I were holding a golden ingot in my palm, or clutching a cluster of shimmering diamonds. Here was the Terra Incognita in metallic form: the precious made commonplace. I was curious to see how else that equation manifested itself in the land beyond the Dell. What else of value had the Outlanders diminished in worth and merit? I knew for one thing that there were those within that large tribe of humanity who placed far less value upon human dignity, upon selfrespect and self-determination, upon human life itself. I was ready to hear everything else that Miss Wolf was willing to impart about people who would make aluminium into toss-away cans and humans into mammalian refuse.

And she could see it. In my eager eyes. In the corresponding looks of anticipation upon the faces of each member of the Fortnightly Poetry League. “Sit back. Relax,” said Miss Wolf. “I’m about to tell you a story which, in the cant of some of my fellow Beyonders, ‘will knock your socks off.’”

“Where to begin now. Where to begin.” Miss Wolf paced back and forth with tumbler in hand, the beads of condensation from the ice cubes trickling down the side of the glass. “Once upon a time — oh, let’s not start it out like that.”

“You may begin with the orphans if you please,” said Miss Bocker. “Why were they brought here in that very first year?”

“Is it not your wish to know first just where in the world you are?”

“We reside somewhere in either the state of Ohio or the state of Pennsylvania in the United States of America.” This from Muntle who spoke for all of us except the vicar, who still held out hopes of our being in Italy (where glorious campaniles grow up like toadstools — or so he supposed).

“And how have you come to this conclusion? I’m curious.”

It was Graham who offered the answer: “Because even a child — sorry, Slingo — can deduct from all the empirical evidence that we reside somewhere about the Allegheny Plateau.”

“ I will offer more specificity than that,” struck in Antonia with no small measure of pride. “That we are situated in the county of Lycoming, the largest such geographical division in Pennsylvania. Have I guessed correctly?”